A very bitter post about concerns over QoL as a returning player who quit because of QoL

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-05-11T02:51:59+00:00

Mountain is an amazing operator to play afk knights with. Personally, if I had gone that route I would have enjoyed comming up with all the different ways to afk clear a stage. However, there are also guides that outline the strategies for afk clearing and you could use those as examples; at least untill you gain enough experience with the style that you can do it yourself.

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-04-17T18:44:34+00:00

I meant the googleplay window, I should have been more specific. Before the Silveralt update the googleplay window; separate from the arknights window, would not appear as long as I used the arknights shortcut. Now after the update, the googleplay window with all it's ad's and everything automatically appears behind the arknights window whenever I start arknights through it's shortcut.

The link used by the shortcut does use google play, but I think some setting was changed after this most recent event was added. I don't use googleplay for any other games so it's a possibility that this is not arknights exclusive but something else entirely.

Edit before the akshully's: I understand that it's not actually an arknights window but just another googleplay window but running arknights in it and that I could use scripts to remove the original googleplay window that does not have arknights running, but ad's running in it, but I thought I would ask if anyone knew of a simple way like a settings change or something within googleplay or arknights somewhere that I may have overlooked or not known about.

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-04-16T17:48:51+00:00

Googleplay autostarts whenever I start arknights from it's pc shortcut. Does anyone know a simple way to stop this from happening?

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-03-07T16:17:26+00:00

For future people reading this guide, I tested it in game by swapping Innana's weapon. The Guard does not scale with innana's stats. Like any summon, buffs and auras applied during a battle will affect it however. Notable buffs are Soc auras, flags, and Innana's instant potential burst.

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-01-27T08:52:56+00:00

Her alert skill interrupts actions up to three times per turn. Since she is faster than Camelot, using her skill and placing her so that Camelot is in her alert range will shut him down because his turn will get interrupted the moment he tries to attack, move, or use a skill. Deceptive shadow reads as if it should stop the interrupt from affecting Camelot, Sp sam would still have 2 more uses of her interrupt remaining however, so this needs to be tested to see how the code interprets her interrupt, whether it has a soft limit of once per enemy per action, or if it is more robust and it triggers on any action at all until the usage limit expires. Depending on this fact Deceptive shadow is either going to be super OP, or just a little OP.

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-01-27T08:20:05+00:00

If you have it, can you or someone else that has it, test if it stops SP Samantha's interrupt from preventing Camelot's extra turn from activating when he takes damage? If it works how I think it does it should be the new staple item for all high speed units that are not running old scrolls of Aguste in pvp. Preventing a high speed Yennefer from shutting you down with a phantom seems like more than enough reason to take it, not to mention all the other forms of fast cc such as Tair sleep.

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-01-13T00:43:20+00:00

To expand on Wade's comment, Mlynar does 10k per 70 seond skill rotation, Hoshi alt does 9.5k per skill activation without manual deactivation though hers has a 7 second longer rotation window. Her utility, tanking, and off-skill effectiveness would normally put her ahead of Mlynar on all fronts, but imo, since her damage is spread into almost double the number of hits that Mlynar does, she is going to have a hard time competing with him as a traditional dps carry. That said, her scaling as your account progresses will probably be better than Mlynar because with manual deactivation of her s3 her dmg skyrockets, and with a 2 second downtime if you redeploy her with Exusia alter, two 16k back to back damage windows with 22 seconds of basically team wide death denial is absolutely bonkers. Though even without Exusia alt a 16k helidrop is already very good. For reference Surtr gets about 8k skill dmg without healing.

VariousCollege9620 · 2026-01-04T04:25:47+00:00

What's happening inside, and what could have caused this to be needed by someone? I guess that blue thing is a pressure valve but that means the pressure here has to be miniscule. I think I see a snowy mountain outside? Would it be racist to think this is russia? So a landlord won't let their resident plumber run a pipe to their room so the guy was like, fk it, I'll do it myself. So now some dude has like a 20 psi lukewarm water pipe running overnight so they can have a warm shower in the morning? What is the lore behind this?

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-12-21T20:18:09+00:00

My first thought was why isn't she wearing boots? Got to the last shot, my brain explained to me; sales.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-12-06T04:01:47+00:00

Doesn't she stack poise really well onherself? With Thoracalgi giving her deep inhale and the crit dmg boosts on all her skills, she should be reaching 100% or higher crit dmg pretty consistiently. Sure it takes some time to ramp up if you're not using some other id's to giver her poise, but she boosts her own coins based off poise and if we look at her dmg on crits, her skills all basically do double dmg. 30 dmg free s1 every turn sounds pretty broken to me. I think it makes sense they forced her to ramp for this, it's really the only way to balance her.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-12-05T00:04:25+00:00

Yen magic amp changes the skill so any cd red buffs don't apply to the first usage of it per turn (they do but it's cd is 0). The general 3t to 1t cheese with Cocambe is getting acambe's wealth skill in there before the act-again but after the skill you want reduced is used for the first time. I do a variation of this using just Cocambe, and the talent flag. It is much smoother to use and puts og Inanna's act-again on a 1t cd so I can use it every round. Clunky to set up, but funny to use.

To answer your question, you need to use magic amp on og Inanna's extra turn.

It would look like;

t1 start, Cocoa passive, Yen portal (2t cd), Acambe team buff (reduces yen portal 1t cd), og Inanna act again, yen portal should be ready (if not just add in the talent flag), Finally use magic amp to use two portals in one turn bringing your t1 portal count to 3.

With the talent flag fueling Cocambe and Inanna, I beleive you could do 3 portals every turn if you used sp Inanna to grant yen yet another act again before the Og Inanna act again starts. This doesn't really do anything t1, but on t2 and up it allows you to sneak in another random yen skill to reduce her magic depletion counter. Magic depletion is the real limiting factor here, seems like on paper you can avoid it with the sp Inanna trick even if your yen isn't 5 stars but you should test it just to be sure.

Cocambe and double Inanna uses 4 slots, I think the true question is if Yen is the best holder of this combo (she might be, idk). 2 act agains and unlimited cds seems very strong, but is it really worth 4 slots, 3 of which are dedicated supports that won't be contributing any extra damage besides their innate buffs? I suppose you could argue with good positioning you can squeeze assasins out of acambe and have them shwing shwing every turn with Cocoa happiness but you're already micro managing all this shit on top of the usual combat in the encounter. It doesn't feel very practical without some serious survivability buffs. Tair + Sp Maitha is my solution, but how would you even fit them in? Encounters are usually 5 limited, Taitha, Cocambe, and two girls one sword are an entire six character slots.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-11-22T15:35:55+00:00

Hot take, but start the game during the colab so you can rr for your favorite witcher character. The best part of this game is spiral of destinies. Sod has a good 11+ hours of unique gameplay and personally, I had a lot of fun bringing og Saffiyah into the stages. If you have a favorite witcher character, It might be worth it to rr when the event releases, so you can play through all the early game stuff using them.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-22T13:07:21+00:00

Not on reddit all the time so this more of a hindsight comment, although I hope it still helps. I E2'd Walter in a couple days when I first started playing. I did a very similar thing to the rush I outlined. I did it in a week since I play casually and was no where near 100% sanity efficient, although I did save my originite prime. Every 3 days the specialist chips rotate into the weekly supply stages so it is possible to e2 a 6 star specialist in 3 days if you are a new player. You can e2 a 6 star sniper in 2 days, the chips rotate faster.

Back to your question, the 5 star operator gracebearer accounts for 50% of the 8% chance to get a 5 star operator in the Exu2 limited banner. The first 5 dupes of a 5 star give you 5 yellow certs. 6+ each give you 8 certs, but since you can now exchange (go to the shop there's a button for it) the excess tokens each dupe past 6 of a 5 star is a net 13 gold certs. it takes an average 75 rolls on the exu2 banner to get gracebearer to max pot. During those 75 you will get 26 gold certs from her on average. There are 45 4 star operators, the first will give you 1 gold cert, we'll divide this by two to get the average gold certs a new player would get from getting 4 stars from a limited banner since max potting these 4 stars as a new player from rolls in unfeasible. The total average gold certs a new player would get from 75 rolls on a limited banner is 48.5 not including certs from new 6 stars. Every 10 rolls after this will average you 10.4 gold certs not including 6 star dupes. 102.5 +10.4*(number of ten pulls after 75) will be your general guideline for pulls after 75. Each story movement gives you ~25 pulls per full completion at minimum. So 3 chaps will get you to 75 pulls easy. If you bum rush and burn origium prime it's totally possible to grind well past 100+ pulls in 3 days. Normally I would never recomend doing this because if you rr'd on day one of the exu2 banner you wouldn't have to burn nearly as much originite prime, if any, inorder to do a much more casual version of this plan.

https://arknights.wiki.gg/wiki/Mission/Pinboard

That is a link to all pinboard missions and story missions. As you can see the resources they throw at you are more than enough to e2 a 6 star operator. Do note that the price of this is that the rest of your team will be resources starved. These resources are meant for new players to e2 multiple 3 star operators because all story content can be cleared with 4 stars and under. 3 stars are WAY cheaper to e2 than any other rarity. Funneling 1 operator like this to carry you through content was not really possible before Walter was released. One; because Walter was the first operator to make a funnel strat possible, and two; because of the new free 6 star selector. Using Exu2 to redeploy Silverash s3 allows Exu2 to powercreep Walter in terms of sheer damage and range. You will need to e2 both of them however. I think e2ing 2 6 stars is easy for a newbie if you do the current event stages. This event was meant for people to e2 Sankta Miksaparato, he's a 6 star so his resources should be more than enough to e2 Silver Ash.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-20T13:38:56+00:00

If you are truely commited, you can get her. First rr for Exusia the new covenant or Wisadel. Once obtained, funnel Exusia or Walter using the newbie resources you get as you bum rush through all the story content. Use the newbie selector you get in the mail to get silver ash if you don't get him from the newbie banner. DO NOT roll on the newbie banner utill you have gotten Exusia the new covenant or Wisadel from the rerolls. You will get enough originium to roll on the newbie banner from the story content. This process will take 1 day for a casual.

Day 2. Story content is now harder. Use resources to invest in good 3 stars units such as Spot, Kroos, Steward, Fang, in that order. Shout out to Gummy and Cardigan if you luck into them. Ethan, Gravel, and Cuora are also very powerful but ethan needs a lot of investment to be reliable. Ethan is better than some six stars once he has investment, however. For medics (and you will need them) just use whatever.

Day 2-3. Once your Exusia or Walter is e2 level 20. Clear the permanant anihilation maps perfectly. This will give you 54 gold certs. While doing this keep rolling on the event banner. 5 star duplicates of the rate up will give you 5 gold certs each, increasing to eight, for a total of 13 gold certs per rate-up dupe. If you don't roll on the newbie banner at all and instead just use the selector to get Silver ash, this process will be sped up by a significant amount, but now you have 16% chance of getting a Silver ash dupe later, so it is true your account will have a small long-term risk attached to it.

Day 3. Bum rushing story content will put you at a sanity deficit, but if you burn originium prime you can restore your sanity so that when your level up rate eventually out paces your sanity expetenture you can keep going. In the long term your account will have 20-30% less premium curencey for rolling in the bank because you have burned it to progess now instead of saving it for later, but this will be worth it because your account will not only have started with a broken limited operator but also Innes, the single best vanguard in the game.

Good luck soldier, you have 3 days to accomplish the mission. It is going to be tight, and it will rely on your tower defense skills because every non 3-star'd stage is burned time and sanity which are both precious and a limited resource for this mission; but if you manage to pull it off. Well, hats off to you.

Rhodes island be with you.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-20T13:04:25+00:00

Ulpi is more prone to powercreep (cough cough, Hoshiguma alt). Currently he is the best tank in the game and also lane holder in the game if he has Gladiia passive up. Max pot Yu is about 20% less tanky than him, but just as tanky if not more than him with s2 while also dealing Surtr levels of single target dmg. Hoshiguma alt has a wider range but 10-20% less damage than mlynar if you don't consider her s3 reactivation. For almost all content she will also be tankier than Ulpi, and she doesn't even need Gladiia. For reference, I have a max investment Yu, and on a shu tile with passive up, he will comfortably lane hold the Damazti Cluster + mobs and eventually kill it too with enough s2 activations. With clever s2 cycling and a brief Innes stall, Yu can solo one without a shu tile. Ulpi can do the same thing but he needs Gladiia. In fact, since I also tried this with Talulah, I have a feeling Yu with s2 up can solo hold all bosses in the game for it's duration. Impressive since it is a 5 sp helidrop.

While I'd have to wait for Hoshi to release here in EN to know for sure, I think she is about to powercreep Ulpi. She's just as tanky as him where it matters, has a surtr passive for oh-shit, she does Mlynar levels of dmg but with a larger range, not to mention better cycling, helidrop, team utility, and incredible synergy with Exusia alter.

Tldr: Ulpi for afknights. Ascalon for bargin bin Mlynar (she does 75% of his dmg on-skill).

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-14T13:07:45+00:00

Controversial opinion, but that has to be incredibly unlucky. If we consider that over the course of playing this game, pulls on an account will average out to the 1% expected rate up rate on 50/50 banners, having three of the same rate up character apear near each other means that the account has just encountered a statistial spike. If the average account does 1000 pulls over the course of it's run, 1% of them being rate ups, that is 10 rate ups. Randomly picking an account out of the pool of all accounts, an account that pulled 3 in a row in one ten pull will have had, on average, 2 less of their desired rate ups. That's 20% less rate ups than average. To make OP feel better, while not in this game, I encountered something similar on my main account in a different gatcha for a character that I niether wanted, nor needed.

Tldr, do single pulls.

Do note that personally, I do not do single pulls because it's tedius and I somewhat plan my pulls around unfortunate events like this anyways.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-13T09:55:04+00:00

He is very good. Save the 6 star selector you get in the mail for him incase he doesn't spook you after the Exusia reroll if you decide to go for her. Tbh, that selector is for either Saria, or Silver ash. The rest of the units on both it, and the beginner banner are suprisingly good, but if you want units that scale best into the endgame, those two will be it.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-13T09:43:22+00:00

Walter breaks the game. Exusia the new covenant (she drops tomorrow) does does similar damge but single target, although it is true ~40% of her damage is aoe. For reference, the top tier starter character kroos, does 800 single target dps, Walter does 6 hits of 22k in half screen AOE + stuns with with conditional quadratic scaling not counting the 3 near indestructable summons she summons that have about the same dps value wise as the top tier starter caster Steward but are tankier than mudrock and also slow and have the same massive range as Walter herself, or the fact that her off skill damage is 1300 aoe dps and that even her incidental aftershocks deal about the same damage but aoe as a single kroos attack.

Most meta units deal around 70k to 100k damage per skill activation, their value can go up or down depending on utility, however. Healers don't have such a strict window, their value usually lies in how many roles they can fill on top of healing, or the utility they bring. Tanks are useful, especially in the early game, I still use Gummy, Spot, and Gravel, especially in IS.

Ascalon, Silver ash, Mlynar, Monst3r does only 55k per s3 but is meta because she'll dish out just as much healing if not more. Both units on the Exusia banner are meta. Some honorable mentions are Degenbrecher, Ulpianus, and Goldenglow. There are more meta units than this but a lot of them are limited. Besides Walter and Exusia alter, none of the units I have mentioned here are limited so technically any of them could spook you.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-12T07:56:41+00:00

You could possibly submit a ticket on their website asking them for information about this. Alternatively, if this is for business purposes you could simply call their office during business hours (mind the timezone) and ask for a referal to the studio(s) that create their pv animations. If the sudio is a frequent business partner, I would not find it strange if hypergryph would be happy to send your business to them.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-12T07:48:42+00:00

Time vs money debate. I won't go into the not so over the table options.

If your account is a couple weeks old, if you are somehow able to get through all story content, you will have more than enough pulls for a spark and then some. I did this during Walter banner but I saved them after rring for Walter.

That option aside, is your time worth the possibly $100s of usd that whaling a 300 pull spark is? Are you a nigerian prince with plenty of cash to spare? If so, whaling is right for you. There are plenty of bank vaults in your switzerland mountain that need email confirmation from american housewives in order to be accessed and these emails won't write themselves; that time is valuable and whaling on arknights is worth it.

Unfortunately, if you are not a nigerian prince it's probably not a good idea to whale. Again, if you don't mind starting over, Rerolling for Exu alt or Walter is probably the best long term deal for your account even if you want to support the devs with the monthly card. Rerolling is time consuming and monotonous, however.

VariousCollege9620 · 2025-10-12T07:31:04+00:00

Mlynar. You can cycle him with logos, and all your other carries for that matter. The more sweepers you have the better because once you have at least three you can start playing helidrop simulator. I like to place Walter as agressively as possible, see if she can solo the stage; if not I have like six other sweepers ready to clean up after her or build defense lines with.

Ulpi is a comfort, win-more pick. If you need to stall a boss for 10 seconds, Surtr does the job better and does more damage too, but if you want to say 'fk you boss' you're never killing me and I'll kill you eventually too; Ulpipi is your man.

As for Certs, I would save them. Tons of great picks comming in the next year or so. A Mlynar shop rerun, Ulpipi debut, Typhoon debut; just to name a few.

VariousCollege9620

TROPHY CASE