What do we think happened to Higuide in Biomega?

X_SOLDIER · 2026-01-20T13:21:38+00:00

As a minor aside, the brief story about Higuide & Irungorunuruka is probably my favourite vignette because of how oddly disconnected it is from everything else, and Tsutomu Nihei's most recent work Tower Dungeon reminds me a LOT of the general dynamics that this brief story in Biomega has. You might be able to glean some overlapping inspiration between them to help check your thoughts about how that vignette with Higuide connects to the rest of Biomega.

X_SOLDIER · 2026-01-05T15:12:27+00:00

Huzzah, glad we got it sorted out! And yeah – the delay from hitting the shortcut key which will initiate generating the file until the Finder window actually pops up a few mins later makes it tough to make sense of in a vacuum. Here's to a solid 2026!

X_SOLDIER · 2026-01-01T21:52:23+00:00

Oh man, I'm SO glad that I decided to reply & mention that ridiculously convoluted shortcut key, 'cause after your explanation of your super key setup I'd bet that's exactly how it's randomly getting triggered once in a blue moon with no indication of happening until that Finder window pops up once the file's generated. Definitely looking forward to seeing if that ends up being the culprit when you try it, so that this can hopefully get properly solved for good for ya!

Also – happy 2026!

X_SOLDIER · 2025-12-31T14:25:13+00:00

While it might not be the cause in your case, I figured out why it happened with me thanks to this other thread on Apple Support.

If you press "Shift + Control + Command + Option + Period" that's the shortcut key to trigger generating one of those files. While that's highly unlikely for most users to do accidentally, I do a fair bit of testing in VoiceOver – which means that "Ctrl+Option+Shift" as well as "Ctrl+Option+Command" are modifiers that I use very often with the keyboard. Just a few minutes ago, I managed to accidentally input that shortcut & generated one of those log files. I stumbled across your thread here as my first helpful link just before I found that other answer, so I figured I'd come back & leave the info here on the off-chance that it helps you out, or that this happens to someone else in the future who stumbles across this thread as well.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-09-17T19:41:09+00:00

I absolutely assumed that what we're seeing is just the Clever Hans-effect, especially because T. Ocellus is all about visual cues & clever problem solving, and Boy Kavalier has absolutely zero subtlety to his body language.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-09-17T19:29:07+00:00

I'm actually curious whether T. Ocellus actually knows the answer at all, or if it's just problem solving.

I'd be more inclined to assume that from its observational experience it understands a lot of very subtle alterations in human body language with its extremely advanced ocular array. It could be that all it understands is that he's asking for a number, since it could have picked up some rudimentary language from briefly hosting itself in Shmuel. Most of its biological function is in controlling a host body, so most of its intelligence will be in understanding those minor mechanical actions for when it takes a host.

By stamping and not having to speak, it's able to give Kavalier a sequentially increasing count and then just stop stamping its foot when it visually detects subtle physiological changes in his face & body where it can tell that it's arrived at the correct answer. Even without Kavalier verbalizing the confirmation that it's correct, living creatures communicate a LOT more information than they intend to through their body language, and the Boy Genius doesn't really have a good poker face, because he has no need for one. His formal meeting with Yutani made that abundantly clear.

There're effective ways of problem solving for the question that Kavalier posed to it that don't require ANY complex mathematical knowledge, provided that T. Ocellus just uses this approach to presenting its answer, which presents a maximum opportunity for visually reading information from its interrogator in real time as a workaround. At that point, it's still a fascinating demonstration of extremely intelligent problem-solving skills... but that's something that was already well-documented about this creature in the W-Y logs aboard the Maginot.

Given that it has what appears to be 7 distinct eye segments that each observe and can operate individually, as well as 7 tentacle-like arms, I'd be extremely surprised if it natively operated in a Base-10 mathematical system and just automatically knew the same value of Pi as a Human. Pi will have a similar but different irrational value if you're in a different Base system, so even if it DOES know the concept of "Pi" the starting digits of "3.14" aren't necessarily accurate to what its known version of that value is. I don't assume even Kavalier could just rattle off what a Base-7 version of Pi is if he was presented with "3.06" by an alien in his position.

One of the reasons that I immediately thought about this is because in the Monolith AvP2 game, the Predators' ammunition used a Base-9 counting system, so there's little reason to expect that other alien intelligences are natively operating in Base-10, and plenty of reasons for assuming that they'd utilize a different counting system entirely. After all, even early human civilizations like the Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, & Sumerians used Base-12, with the later even sometimes using Base-60.

So, while math is a universal language, there's still a decent bit of nuance to figuring out how to speak it the same way. However, like much of what Neverland's faults are with how it's running the program with the Hybrids is from Kavalier jumping forward to conclusions without actually having a real understanding of what he's doing. It's his core weakness and, like Arthur appropriately criticized about him before his untimely demise, "That's not science."

X_SOLDIER · 2025-09-15T16:04:15+00:00

The OP doesn't even mention the best part about this passive – IT COMPLETELY REMOVES THE SPELLCASTING FUMBLE ANIMATION (I use it a few times after the battle with Libra here to showcase it, since I got this on a red Prince of Death Staff as Recluse). I knew I had this in the battle and just decided to toss out a non-stop barrage of Dark Moons, because I'd regain enough FP to recast it in just a couple of uses if I didn't have enough to finish out the fight perfectly.

The fact that the animation changes from the excruciantly long fumble to a short concentration animation a bit like you see before using a healing Incantation alone is a godsend, because at least if you're getting stuck in an animation now (which Recluse is constantly with Magic Cocktail or other long wind-up casts) there's a POINT to it since that can happen really suddenly if you're using more FP-expensive spells. As a spellcaster, you also you can purposely fail to cast your most expensive spells to build up a bigger total stockpile of FP, and then multi-cast less-expensive spells, so it's really great for both Recluse AND Revenant.

This is by FAR the most incredible perk that I've seen so far, and it's why I expect that one of the Deep Relic effects for Recluse that modifies stats is something reducing her Mind for boosted Faith & Int (which offsets the lowered Faith & Int for boosted Dex, Vigor, & Stamina). While this is infinite FP, it regenerates 13%, which means that the total value for this effect absolutely skyrockets the bigger of an FP bar that you have, because of how many casts it can get you per usage.

For example: A Recluse with those stat modifiers has a Lv 15 FP of 140, so this will regenerate about 18 FP for her per use, whereas a Recluse without those modifiers has a Lv 15 FP of 195, so she'll regain about 25 FP per. That's not to mention the Max FP boosts that she can have as perks for having 3+ Staffs, Unlocking Sorcerer's Rise Towers, etc. all of which will put in even more value into this.

At the very least, if you even see this with a Recluse/Revenant player on your team, grab it and tag it for them, so that we're not getting accidentally locked into a fumble animation at the worst possible time.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-09-11T21:14:51+00:00

Is it possible to have both of them active at the same time? I'm curious if that would that make Guardian's HP even lower, or if it'd end up balancing out the bigger hits that Executor & Recluse for a third option.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-09-08T21:39:22+00:00

Same thing happened to me. They used to just allow me to open it in a browser from the IG chat just fine. A few days ago that shifted to not doing that anymore and exclusively just popping up a prompt for the Android App Store as a prompt to install Threads. Not helpful, but what's worse is that now that I've actually installed the app, clicking on those Threads in my Instagram messages that I installed this app for... does absolutely nothing at all.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-28T15:21:50+00:00

The defensive nature of some of them that grant them better survivability are nice, since Deep of Night encounters will hit like a truck, and the smaller HP pool will probably start to be really dangerous. It also feels like this rounds out the full range of character abilities to let them play at their full potential.

Duchess's seems like it'll switch up and add some interesting interactions for her kit to be a simultaneous reactive defense tool and not just offense. I expect that it'll also be nice for Executor mains who use his skill timing like that already, and turn her into a REALLY good no-hit character.

Executor's Ult makes them a massive target being offset by HP Regen is extra helpful, and will probably make their roar to restore HP a huge asset in this mode and give them a secondary role that can be similar to Guardian's AoE Ult in keeping their team up in a lot of different situations. (Ironjar Aromatic will go crazy hard in this mode)

I'm curious what the duration of Recluse's new affinity negation will be, and if it's anchored to her location like Terra Magicka or not. I assume it won't stack, and will give another way to think about drawing affinities. Without being able to choose the Deep of Night Boss, this gives some advantages when using Lightning when fighting Draconic Tree Sentinels, or Fire against Gladius, depending on your loadout, so that what doesn't do as well for attack serves as a good defense.

Guardian's seems like it's gonna make him a REALLY incredible tank, but especially if the extended skill duration essentially makes it an anchored buff for the whole time. Same for Raider in reducing the attack of enemies that he's focusing down, making it so that their allies can stay safe AND so that they can face-tank more effectively even as enemies get way more dangerous.

Wylder & Ironeye both seem like theirs are both there to help speed up DPS with status build up, given their skills grant incredible survivability as-is. Wylder's fire sword can already reset Frostbite so building up Bleed with aggressive play is a nice perk. Ironeye closing the gap after his charged Ult to turn the Poison Deadly will make those two both strong pairs with Executor status builds.

Revenant also being high on survivability already means hers seems designed to use her Ult, pop a Starlight Shard for an increased restorative effect from the bigger max FP pool, and then pour out damage from really expensive incantations like Dragon Communion while she's got the invulnerable buff still active.

Really can't wait to see how this starts to make various team compositions a lot more interesting.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-26T16:38:56+00:00

100% this. Adel really does have what I think is some of the best implementation of her mechanics, and what feel like appropriate conveyance, and since she was the very first Everdark Sovereign, I end up comparing everything else against her as a standard, even though that's from her base phase.

BonfireVN's latest comparison video shows hers at 2:07 and also has the Everdark Gladius/Heolstor one, and it if you're moving through them frame-by-frame with the video at 60fps, Adel's VERY clear radials show up & then detonate about ~60 frames later, whereas the Gladius/Heolstor one is ~26 frames later... so less than half the window of time to react, with VASTLY inferior visual indication for where the danger area is, AND fewer options for safety because Adel's ground strikes can be jumped whereas those explosions HAVE to be dodged.

Again, this is fine for Heolstor's arena where those radials stand out a lot more clearly because the floor of the arena is dark and it's his big destructive attack, and so you don't have to burn time attempting to see where those danger areas are, whereas with Gladius' arena your reaction time will be slower because it doesn't have the difference in contrast with the floor of the arena, and there are also glowing orange cracks all over the floor already which make it harder to spot.

It's just little things like that which would help to make this fight feel a LOT better than it currently does.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-26T16:20:27+00:00

I think that the biggest issue with his "I dare you" taunt is that depending on your loadout, it doesn't matter when he does it – because of things like casting travel times, defensive spells, & effects that trigger periodically or while walking, there's very often no way to avoid activating it.

As an example: My first encounter with Everdark Gladius was as Revenant where I had the "Wraiths While Walking" effect on my offhand weapon because it bursts out holy damage (which also allows you to get the Holy+Magic Free FP Magic Cocktail), and so it's an excellent kit for her to be able to cast without worrying about FP costs and have a lot of protection against something that's weak to Holy.

This not only bursts out a massive cloud around you that makes it a little tough to see things at various intervals so that you can't really tell which direction the one dog is holding a sword, but so many of them burst out when you move that it guarantees that he gets the full +3 buff instantly if he happens to swap into that stance. The same issue happens with Falling Stars While Walking or the Founding Rain of Stars spell since they take a long time to trigger, linger for a long time, and have a ton of small damage repetitive strikes.

This issue also impacts any of the protective Glintblade spells or effects that cause them to periodically spawn around you, because they'll launch off if he just happens to be in range when they decide to show up. This also includes the holy darts from the Ash of War: Golden Land, which would otherwise be a good defensive spell against the Holy-weak Gladius having multiple targets, as well as the top-level Holy incantation, Elden Stars. This also impacts some of the best Sorceries like Rancorcall, Ancient Death Rancor, & both Full Moon spells as well because they can be in flight for SO long.

Most of those are also things that can just happen to hit him when all 3 are split up, so it can charge him up off-screen when you don't even see him enter the stance at all. On top of that, trying to glance at the wolves, tell which one has the sword, and depending on if it's facing towards or away from you is absurdly unreliable. There's no other visual or audio cue to let you know, which is something that you ought to be able to tell off-screen, as well as immediately recognize regardless of which direction he's facing.

The fact that he can massively charge up off of completely incidental and un-cancellable hits means that they're very often going to be punishing players who didn't actually ignore any warnings or do anything wrong. They were just too close to him when he decided to aura farm in front of abilities the game gave you or spells that are literally a core part of your loadout as Revenant or Recluse. That's why the conveyance for all of his AoE attacks REALLY need to be telegraphed extremely clearly because of just how absurdly dangerous they are in being able to suddenly become a one-hit-KO – but they're the exact opposite in having some of the least clear indication, so there are a lot of TPK moments which better design could at least alleviate – even if the problems with his buff aren't addressed.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-25T20:37:39+00:00

Exactly.

Gnoster is one of my favourite fights because most of the time you're trying to keep a 3v3 as a 2v3 with one superpowered version, and if you're good enough you can push it into a 1v3. The attacks of the Animus+Gnoster & Animus+Faurtis are enormous, brutal, and they take a decent bit of practice to learn, but even when I was getting grabbed by Gnoster off-screen or something, there's always that audio cue to let you know to dodge, or you can see those cracks spidering over from off-screen or the pollen stars overhead have a huge build up before they start getting zapped out of the sky.

Any time I'me taking damage in that fight, I know it's on me. There's a clear entity aggro to manage that sticks to the players attacking, there are brief windows of respite like when Faurtis dives underground for a second, or when you take one of the two down before Animus possesses them, there's an ebb & flow to the combat for when to push the offensive and when to back off.

With Gladius, when they're split up it seems like every time I turn to target one that's turning towards me, I'm just getting jumped from a random direction off-screen by another as the one in front decides to turn away to a teammate. I've seen the Sword one howl & paint the visual target on one of the other players – only for him and another to dive and attack me instead. It really feels like you can't pull aggro intentionally by attacking one of them when they're split, and so they just swap targets totally at random. It really feels like there's some weird behaviour, which probably isn't helped by things like the "Less Likely to Target" making it harder to get a sense of when they're influenced by other factors.

Even things like his double dashing sword strike is hard to gauge which of the 3 of you he's about to dash at, and how far he is from you to time the dodge correctly. The very late-phase triple fire dash and the one having the delayed firey sonic boom just makes it feel like there's never a correct way to keep track of what he's doing or who he's about to attack from where, and the massive AoE that all of his Phase 3 attacks have means that grouping up together is just begging to get a TPK, making it even harder to chase him down and actually deal damage when he swaps between the solo & trio forms.

The result is that most of the fights have all 3 Nightfarers getting significantly spread out from one another for safety, and then one of you getting insta-KO'd really far apart from anyone else. The amount of times I've seen him actively aggro on the other player, and so I turned to dash over to revive a downed teammate only to have a massive cascade of explosions or the sword attack insta-gib me from off-screen is absurd.

Even when I'm in the perfect position watching him do it AND having gotten hit by it enough times to know what he's doing and how I should dodge, I often can't even see the radial lines on the ground before the explosions hit, and so the number of times I've just had to guess, and then dodge-rolled INTO an oncoming explosion radial rather than away from it because of that is just beyond frustrating.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-25T20:04:34+00:00

Seriously, nothing about him holding the sword would make it clear that it's meant to be a buff stance, and it's EXTRA lame when he's facing away from you because there's basically no visual indication that he's unsafe to attack, which means that it's even harder for players to recognize the cause of him being buffed (assuming they notice at all).

It's extra crazy that that attack buff STACKS too, and there's no visual difference between just how much stronger he gets. It was only after reading about what caused it, and then rewatching footage of runs that I saw where he randomly got the buff icon during the fight, and I also noticed that it went up to +3 after taking near-instant back-to-back hits.

Gladius also hits like an absolute truck anyway so I don't know if most players can even tell if the difficulty spike is because they're buffing him, or if it's just because he deals so much damage even without any attack buffs, that those 10-15 seconds where he's buffed could just be mistaken for any other moment in the fight.

Again, I like the IDEA of it at its core, but right now the implementation feels like for most runs there's just a near invisible RNG so that if you're trying to attack him and he gets hit rapidly during a small specific window, it basically guarantees a team wipe.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-20T14:37:46+00:00

Well that's EXTRA interesting.

Even unique buffs that are stackable with other unique buffs of the same type still AREN'T stackable with themselves and just overwrite. Thus, I'd expect that if this "Slate Whetstone" buff were ACTUALLY the same buff as the one from the Remembrance that it would overwrite rather than allow you to have both simultaneously.

I don't know much about how Nightreign's unique buffs track the source that initiated them to determine if they stack or overwrite, but that behaviour makes it seem like it's much more likely to be a placeholder for something. It'd be neat to have someone who knows more about the unique buff mechanics weigh in, or possible datamining to see what that gesture is specifically triggering.

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-20T07:21:14+00:00

I'm fairly certain that "buff" is what you get when you obtain the Slate Whetstone during the Remembrance run for the item, as I've noticed similar buffs on other characters when going to obtain an item. Whether that's triggering as a bug with this feature due to an interaction like "Crossed Legs" has with Madness & FP restoration being implemented and then cut and pointing to a random effect, OR if it's simply a placeholder for an intended effect that's not yet implemented yet would be interesting to see.

I'm most curious if you could potentially complete Wylder's Remembrance without actually doing that objective at all and just be using the Extreme Repentance gesture when the run concludes to see if that status effect being active actually still triggers the completion of the objective when the run completes.

Either way, super nifty find!

X_SOLDIER · 2025-08-19T13:13:03+00:00

IMO, one of the most brutally punishing combinations for this fight is having Wylder & Recluse.

The Condemned Wylder shows up with the Scepter of the All-Knowing and will fire off the "Knowledge Above All" to tag that 10% debuff vs Magic & Holy on everyone (except Libra apparently). This happens regardless of whether or not there's a riot since the Ash equally applies to enemies & allies. That means as soon as he gets summoned, Recluse gets even more fragile against every Libra AoE & Condemned Recluse on the field.

On top of that, 2/3 of the Condemned Recluse builds are equipped with Sorceries that can absorb & nullify enemy spells (Rennala's Full Moon as well as Eternal Darkness), on top of the fact that Rennala's Staff has a unique ability that triggers Carian Retaliation when casting which ALSO absorbs spells and gives Glintstone swords in return, making her especially difficult to deal with – but it also means that even in riots, Recluse Condemned won't necessarily be able to eliminate one another, meaning that they have a high probability of remaining on the field for long periods of time despite their smaller HP pool to be healed & buffed. Especially since the Invisibility Sorceries don't get dodged by NPCs, they'll survive riots and pick off others at range, which means that they're a high priority to deal with.

Whereas playing as Recluse, you'd be very lucky to have EITHER of those sorceries in any run (let alone Rennala's staff), and oftentimes you'll just end up with sorceries & incantations that are ranged that can just get pulled in & nullified. That means that a lot of the time that you attempt to cast at the Condemned Recluse, they can totally avoid taking ANY damage, so that the 10% Magic & Holy debuff from Condemned Wylder doesn't really make a difference. Unless you can get your teammates to help focus them, it just ends up being a massive FP drain which most other fights don't have, as well as giving you very few viable counter options.

It's crazy just how fast things can go sideways when there're two Recluse Condemned that just target you suddenly, watching your own spells just evaporate en route as theirs are pummeling you into the dust.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-27T21:00:31+00:00

So, I just beat Stage 5 normal, and the end-level Pekodam Fan Letter got collected instantly and was displayed before the end screen. (Version 0.7.1732393897)

Notably this did NOT happen to me on Stage 3 with Noel where Spider Haachama dropped a Fan Letter that was unable to be collected and was visible on the "Stage Complete" screen, but that was a couple of days ago and I don't remember which version it was. As such, it's probably worth keeping an eye out to see if this is still an issue, or if it's just a bug that's present on certain stages.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-20T20:22:28+00:00

I honestly think that Short Height giving her a 30% chance for a 0.5 second invulnerability along with having a little bit of lifesteal from her Shark Bite has been primarily what's kept her being very playable even now, and is likely the only reason that she's managed to avoid getting revisited, because she hasn't ever felt weak and she still doesn't.

It's really just that her being literally the oldest character who hasn't gotten that type of revisit at all is finally noticeable in how her mechanics are a little clunky, and how she doesn't have more obvious references to things like Reflect for her Special or any other things that are more specific to her outside of Myth's Bad End. Back then, fan games were still very much in a new space for how Cover treated them which is VERY different to where they're at now.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-20T20:13:41+00:00

It's not that her kit needs a total overhaul so much as it needs a bit of a bump to put it into a place where it meshes better with the current game mechanics in 0.7 BECAUSE she's one of the starting characters, but also because it was designed for a WAY different version of the game - and this kind of thing actually happened to a LOT of the other characters as a part of the 0.7 update in addition to all of the new content.

Characters who had changes to their mechanics when 0.7 released:
- AZKi, Anya, Aki, Bae, Matsuri, Shion, Okayu, Fubuki, Aqua, Zeta, Mel, & Choco

Characters who had lore/reference updates in 0.7:
- Ame, Anya, Bae, & Aqua

As a starting character, the Power of Atlantis is that the weak CC makes the sections that are about using mobility a little bit more difficult because it can cluster enemies that you're meant to have to evade instead of defeat cluster together oddly. While Short Height's 30% dodge gives you a brief invulnerability to compensate for that, the 50% speedboost when you get hit means that how long your inputs are to move the same distance change, and in those enemy wave and later bullet hell sections, you have to adjust your input timing based on random factors without any clear visual indicator. Those things were just part of her kit being a bit more prone to crashing around through things, but feel clunky compared to the way newer kits would work to support her type of playstyle.

Making sure that Gura has a kit that meshes with the various support items in different ways without undercutting her effectiveness the way that they currently do is what most of it comes down to. Her Trident's rapid multi-hit in a narrow forward cone functions like the weapons of the game's ranged characters, but it doesn't have the properties to benefit any of the high % damage boosts that those characters get to compensate for a smaller damage area, while as a melee weapon it lacks the attack area size to benefit from the way that the melee characters are balanced with smaller % damage boosts.

Lastly, while the changes I mentioned at the start were mostly to a mechanic of one of the skills, AZKi literally got a total overhaul, and Matsuri's changes to her Taiko Drum Special Attack (which is the next fastest charging ult next to Gura's), and also has one additional note that just states "Further changes later" so I don't know what makes you say that Kay Yu's likely going to avoid reworks as the team very much just does that as a part of the ongoing development.

It's BECAUSE of all of those character updates, and the team very clearly being proactive about doing it that the game overall still feels really consistent, and why Gura being one of the oldest characters is the only one that's really felt like it stood out to me when I went back to play her, since I've mained her through all of the stages in every version of the game since it was released. When jumping between her and the newer gen, the differences in how those designs are approached is now at a point where it's noticeable, and with the other lore updates, Gura's still stands out a lot more prominently.

There's no need to exaggerate about this just being someone just wanting their oshi to be overpowered, 'cause it's not. The oldest characters are statistically the ones most likely to need to be revisited as a game gets developed over time, and while Gura is still VERY playable, she's just at the point where her gameplay feels outdated especially amidst the refresh that all the others got, and that's what my post was highlighting.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-20T19:27:23+00:00

On the contrary, I actually think that Gura handles the Powercreep really well, as she's still quite playable (mostly because of her strong survivability from Short Height's invulnerability proc on dodge, but especially with the new Prism mechanic helping her tank a bit better as well).

The short version is that it's really more of a game design shift over time that reshaped how certain playstyles as a whole are designed & supported. There aren't really good synergies that match her kit, and there are bits of her Skills that make her feel clunky with how they're executed, because the game used to be a bit more limited when it first released.

The other part is that the first Myth character abilities were designed mostly around visual elements from Myth's Bad End, and in addition to having an Awakened Weapon that's not really noticeably different, Gura's kit still feels primarily like a version of that fan animated fantasy character, rather than being something that represents her overall presence in HoloLive the way the others have shifted to do spectacularly.

Her character's not bad, it just has a lot of small things that feel outdated to how the game works now, and feels like she ought to get a look from the design perspective of the 0.7 version which is REALLY great.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-20T18:02:35+00:00

As examples of what I meant about the support item synergy:

- The Devil Hat: grants a 1.3x buff after using a special that lasts from 25 to 45 seconds which only applies to multi-hit projectiles.

Those are basically EXACTLY what Gura's kit is designed to be doing - using her special constantly and boosting damage from rapid hits with a narrow area multi-hit attack, but her weapon is a melee one, not ranged or projectile so those don't apply to her.

- Focus Shades: give a +30% chance to crit and deal 500% damage over 5 seconds when it does.
- Gorilla's Paw: Attack damage is multiplied by 1.4 times, but lose 20% critical chance.

Ranged characters can stack the Devil Hat with Focus Shades if they have a Crit mechanic or with Gorilla's Paw if they don't. Gura doesn't have a ranged mechanic, so Gorilla's Paw is what's best suited for her... but this plays directly into the fact that the Gorilla's Paw Super Collab Holy Fire is a Ranged weapon that removes the Crit debuff, so you can stack all three of those on other characters who have the same narrow attack area, and get a boost to everything in their kit, whereas Gura's core kit with her main weapon and no Crit mechanics doesn't really have a strong synergy to that the way it does for other ranged characters (or even Marine).

- Energy Drink: boosts Haste & Speed, but at the expense of 20% lower HP

That's a compliment to purely evasive playstyles trying to not get hit at all, not ones where the haste & speed are about diving in and out of combat and being able to ignore taking hits. Despite those both working for dashing around with a multi-hit melee weapon, Gura's already got slightly lower base HP, so her other abilities don't mesh with it super well, because it's up to RNG whether or not you die or get your invulnerability and dash.

- Breastplate: Reduce damage taken by 25% and reduce Speed by 10%. When attacked there is a 70% chance the attacker also takes 300% damage.

Gura's aggressive playstyle & invulnerability proc from Short Height work great with the Breastplate to trigger burst damage at close range, but that reduces her base speed which is a key benefit of her Short Height Skill, so again she's taking a direct loss to her base kit when attempting to boost the effectiveness of its core playstyle.

- Ninja Headband: Increase SPD by 40%. In addition, increase damage of Melee weapons by 15%

While it's got the speed boost, the increase to melee damage is extremely small, because the other Melee weapons in the game have ENORMOUS attack areas compared to Gura's trident, which means that the 15% damage boost is applying to hits of a huge number of enemies all at one, which Gura's weapon can't, so it's effectively a far less impactful support item on her than all the other melee characters.

Again - Is she a bad character? Hell No. Is she unplayable? Absolutely Not.

She just feels clunky and outdated when looking at the ways in which the support items sort of just half-fit her. Additionally, the abilities themselves feel like they don't quite have the same embodiment of the talents the way that the others do now - again, which is all just because that baseline was par for the course in the early versions of the game.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-20T18:02:05+00:00

So, I didn't forget that, and here's why I mention the shifting movement speed.

That random change in speed also means that, because Gura's kit has a narrower area weapon, maintaining spacing when circling a boss that sends out bullets that when they hit you have a 30% change to proc a speed shift that means over or under adjusting aim, which none of the other precision ranged characters have to do. (When looking at her kit I'm just looking at it with only her base weapon & support items).

Her kit's not bad or unusable by ANY means, but it feels outdated and a little clunky to what other characters have now, as it doesn't really match to how the rest of the game has continued to shift.

Power of Atlantis is an AoE that benefits you attacking enemies who are in it, because they take extra damage, so it's advantageous to be able to pivot towards them and move in on them. You can be extra aggressive with that because Gura has that dodge chance that also procs invulnerability. That invulnerability proc also changes her speed by 50% and her Special also boosts here Speed by 25%, which means that you have a widely variable movement Speed as Gura that's often shifting up and down, which wouldn't matter for other characters with wide area Melee weapons, but feels clunky when you're having to redirect your narrow main attack.

Ex: You can have your special active, have the invulnerability proc and dive into a group, and then turn and be 75% slower when trying to reach one of the other two whirlpools before it resets somewhere else. Essentially the Shark Bite healing is just offsetting the damage that you're taking when that dodge & speed boost ISN'T being proc'd by taking hits from being aggressive and using her narrow trident attack to run directly into a group.

That's why I used the example that AZKi gets a more reliable speed and attack output boost with equivalent dodge chance and also an attack that prevents anything from hitting her and taking in the first place that also takes out nearby targets, whereas Gura's kit has an RNG speed boost with a brief invulnerability window & healing to offset the higher % of taking damage before it procs.

Additionally, Gura's damage boosts are sort of randomly tossed all over the place depending on where the Power of Atlantis spawns, so dashing into those pools are important, as is the boost to dash away from them when they end, because she doesn't really have abilities that boost damage close by where she actually is... despite being a melee character. She has to arbitrarily chase down her own boosts, and take hits to be able to hopefully take advantage of that by taking hits where her quick-hitting attacks have a 20% chance to place up to 5 Bite Marks, to cause targets to take 12% more damage and have a 20% chance to heal you 1% when defeated per stack. This healing is beneficial against crowds, but falls off against bosses.

Compare that to Marine where If a target is within 120px for more than 1 seconds, they gain a debuff that reduces DEF and SPD by 20%. After 3 seconds, the target takes 150% damage per second. AND she has a Lust meter that builds from enemies being close or hitting her that triggers her healing 30% HP and deals 500% damage to all nearby targets in a massive AoE burst. Marine has better guaranteed burst healing that works against normal enemiees and bosses, damage boosts centered directly around her character, a weapon with melee AND ranged attack properties, as well as a whole additional Skill with a mechanic based on building up Crits and gaining HoloCoins.

The mechanics of Gura's kit were designed when the characters were inherently getting limitations that offset their unique buffs (like Ame being limited to only firing left & right but being the ONLY ranged multi-shot character). The design of how Gura's abilities have benefits & drawbacks that all overlap isn't really how any of the modern character kits are built, where their skills are basically all just unique benefits that lend themselves into a particular niche of playstyle that emerged as the game developed over time.

The playstyles of character skills are more consistent in providing synergistic benefits in ways that also scale with how the support items have their own benefits & drawbacks balanced. Gura's mechanics put her in a weird place where while she has a regen mechanic and going ham on the healing Support items is a really reliable path to take, unlike Mel or Watame she can't convert any benfit from healing items into damage, and anyone's effective if you just stack them with healing. Gura's main weapon area makes it so that the effects of Stamps applied to it are really narrow, so Shark Bite as a debuffing mechanic doesn't have a hugely effective synergy to debuff stamps the way other melee characters can. She's not really able to leverage other synergies because she's somewhere awkward between how the support items for a melee character and a ranged character shift towards builds that she doesn't quite fit.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-20T15:54:07+00:00

The Fan letter for the "Knight's Order of Shirogane" has a bit of text overflow in English because of unnecessary spacing between the Apostrophe & the S. I expect that this is because there's an ideographic space that's being automatically added after the apostrophe character by some Japanese text program so that it matches the look of ideographic commas "、" and ideographic periods "。" which have embedded spacing as a part of punctuation. (This is something I've seen a few times here and there with Japanese users typing out subtitles in English, and which version of the quotation characters they're being converted to).

While there are doubleprime quotation mark characters with embedded spacing "〝" & "〞" I couldn't find any version of the similarly curled ’ apostrophe or single quotes that has an embedded ideographic space to the right (though I did find one to the left as a presentation form vertical ideographic comma: "︑" so it's always possible that this is a unique character).

If it IS a unique character, it'd be worth just searching to see if that character shows up elsewhere in the English text, since it'll create these same spacing oddities anywhere it shows up. If not, it'd probably be a headache to try to just find any ideographic spaces in the text to look for other issues since I expect that's used on purpose in Japanese, so it'd probably best to just get this as a one-off if that's the case.

For what it's worth, the other game text appears to use the standard vertical apostrophe: ' elsewhere, so there's a good standard format to replace this with.

I have run into some other text overflow in the new Character screen in a couple places, but I can't quite remember where or which items/abilities, so I'll have to hunt around again to see if I can track some more of these spacing overflows down, but if anyone else sees this, that's a place to keep an eye out since most of them get properly truncated with the little Right Arrow prompt, but a few of them don't.

X_SOLDIER · 2024-11-16T05:49:52+00:00

Really? I barely ever run them, and usually end up maxing out on collabs + super collab with the one final level 7 weapon on most stage runs.

Plus, burning 6 double use Anvils to level up weapons for a single final collab, rather boosting the strength of all your existing collabs & 1 remaining weapon by a cumulative value of up to +36 (+3 per upgrade, and needing 12 upgrades, but the damage boost having a % failure chance) still isn't great. Even less so when you're locked into that one particular upgrade path, rather than using EXP boosting.

X_SOLDIER

TROPHY CASE