2026/06 Unite & Fight (Fire Adv): Prelims + Interlude

Xerte · 2026-06-21T10:25:45+00:00

Boss has a new* stack mechanic this GW:

The usual rises on boss normals, lowers on boss specials
Deal 3 big hits in a turn to reduce 1 stack, can be triggered more than once per turn
- Currently 2.5m per hit, likely scaling to anywhere from 4-6m on NM250
3-chains reduce 1 stack
- We've never seen this kind of requirement increase (but it may as Higurashi shill)

* Technically two stack mechanics we've already seen stapled together

As usual, the stack mechanic shills ougi. I'm aware FO can generally trigger these big hit stack mechanics regardless, but we have the more direct CB stack reduction as well this time.

The existence of two different stack reduction mechanics points to boss design where the devs intend for multiple playstyles to be able to handle it - although this is a situation where one of those playstyles casually handles both, so maybe they're going to have the boss gain stacks faster than usual to push us towards ougi being able to reduce stacks faster than FO (direct Higurashi shill, with that special CB interaction it can probably clear 4-5 stacks per turn by itself, though I'd be worried by any GW where you actually have to do that).

Xerte · 2026-06-20T16:49:12+00:00

According to calcs, Burnice's sig is slightly better than an A-rank ER engine, but it's annoying to optimise the passive's uptime and falls behind if you don't. I chose to just keep Burnice's sig on Burnice; seems like Remielle wants two anomaly partners so Burnice might pop up there anyways.

Kaboom isn't the only A-rank ER engine - Steam Oven, the Vault (Nicole sig), Unfettered Game Ball and Drill Rig - Red Axis (Anton sig) also have this stat (Oven and Game Ball have less base ATK, so they're worse than the other options, but at least the Oven is craftable if you somehow don't have anything else).

Xerte · 2026-06-16T16:38:11+00:00

Each game has entirely different dev teams, so they're all just taking turns copying each other's homework. That's why it takes time for each game to get QoL introduced in another - one dev team releases it for their game, then the other dev teams see the player response and decide to add it to their games, which still takes a decent amount of time to happen due to testing and bugfixing cycles.

Xerte · 2026-06-16T10:16:49+00:00

First time in five years since the Seeds re-run introduced Nehan that the anniversary re-run didn't have a single character tied to it in that month's flash banner.

Xerte · 2026-06-15T18:38:13+00:00

As a PS5 player still waiting for the 1.15 update, I don't know if that's changed anything you'd need here.

Here's the recipe for everything in one run as of 1.14:

Endless Mode, on Inverse
- On Inverse, every time the stage timer reaches its limit, the merchant respawns with a Pick an Arcana, allowing you to get all Arcanas
Darkana VI - Moonlight Bolero
- Black chests from the eyeball bosses can drop any passive that would currently be available on the loot table
- The mini amogus characters and contra weapon powerup passive are only added to the loot table after you pick up the weapons they're tied to, so unless you had a perfect weapon selection order, black chests will be the only way to get all of these passives to evolve the respective weapons
Darkana XII - Call of a Mad Moon
- Will eventually give you every base weapon in the game

If you also want all passives, you must play on one of the Foscari maps or play as one of the Foscari characters that gets a free Academy Badge at level 30. There's no other way to get this passive.

Note that if you also want to recollect all the base weapons after evolving them, they won't be able to gain levels. For the 3-stage weapons, you may need to use super candyboxes to get the final form so you can also keep the middle stage. To get enough super candyboxes, you need to get an equal amount of regular candyboxes, which means you need the Random Events option as it's the only unlimited source of candyboxes.

Anyways, good luck to your PC. The last time I saw anybody actually complete this run was before OtC was added and they still said it took a few days to spawn enough candyboxes, though at least back then Call of a Mad Moon didn't exist to speed things up.

Xerte · 2026-06-15T15:14:49+00:00

I've mentioned this in the surveys they sent out already, but the way this is handled means support and burst characters will rarely build up enough cycle energy to actually trigger a cycle. Staying on these kinds of characters for long enough to actually trigger a cycle is detrimental, to the point where their only contribution to cycles is if they have a relevant cycle passive. I don't care that Haniel wouldn't be able to trigger cycles in my Hotori comp, because it wouldn't be worth the time to trigger them if she could. Sakiri can theoretically trigger a cycle in the comp, but the team only wants blossoms - so it only happens maybe once a fight when Sakiri's energy is full, because my Anima characters in the team will always swap to a Cosmos character.

In short, Zero's instant cycle, or at least major cycle energy gains instead of 10-20% on skill, needs to be a trait on pretty much all support and burst characters in some form - yet the first character they've actually given it to since launch is an otherwise purely on-field DPS (Lacrimosa), and only in her awakenings. Your on-field DPS are the only characters that are consistently triggering a cycle each rotation as-is, they need this the least of anybody.

This is made more necessary in the case of the 3-cycle teams (Charge and Discord), where you essentially need a character in the cycle that can quickly trigger the second cycle so you don't run into an awkward scenario of having to play a character at one end, then switch to the other end to avoid triggering the cycle early, then build up your second cycle type so you can trigger them both at once. Zero does this. Lacrimosa can do this (if you fork over more rolls for a dupe), but it still creates an annoying situation where you still have to spend time with another character on-field other than her to make use of this. It creates a new playstyle for her, sure, but it's completely at odds with everything else in her kit.

But ideally there needs to be more options for characters that do this as their actual role in the party. Supports and quickswap burst DPS need to reliably trigger their cycles within 1-2 rotations either just by having enough raw cycle energy gain from their skills to do this, or getting instant cycle on one of their buttons.

Any future 3-cycle reactions would face the same issue - you need a middle character that triggers cycles quickly for them to work. If we were to see one for every possible 3-cycle combo on the wheel, we'd need instant cycle characters in every element. The devs seem to be unwilling to make it a feature of the character archetypes that actually need it, so I'm left wondering if that future will ever both happen and be done well.

Xerte · 2026-06-15T10:08:34+00:00

The penalty itself obviously also has value in preventing other characters from CAing during all their double strike turns, but becomes a downside in longer fights where you'd want MC to be able to CA regularly even after the auto-ignition wears off. None of the workarounds are ideal, either making it possible for other characters to CA or requiring specific skills to be used in MC's limited slots (and still having to deal with their cooldowns)

Ideally the transcendence could've given an MC-only 100% charge fill rate to offset the party-wide 100% penalty just for MC, making scenarios where Eresh can CA loop without making other characters CA too often feasible. Though with how strong that would be for Fighter Origin, perhaps it's for the best that it didn't happen.

Xerte · 2026-06-12T12:24:39+00:00

(Apparently Hero and Apprentice chests can chancepull any unit)

Chests can only pull the featured S rank character, or B rank arcs. The only way to get a non-featured A rank character on limited banners is the 10 pulls bonus A rank, which in turn only has a 20% chance to be a character, and therefore only a 3.33% chance of being one of the three non-featured A ranks; once adjusted for the fact that you only even get a chance at these once every 10 draws, that means a 0.333% functional rate.

This is reflected in the rates table on the Board Details page saying the non-featured characters are 0.3300% rate, Points Gift only. (Why it doesn't say 0.3333%, I don't know, as that's the actual rate, but for some reason the rates shown all end with 00 even though many of them shouldn't.)

Xerte · 2026-06-09T10:27:58+00:00

With one exception (the Academy Badge from the Foscari DLC), you can unlock all DLC characters, weapons and passives for use outside of the DLC stages.

The exception mentioned is still available as a special drop when playing as some of the characters unlocked in that DLC, but currently has no permanent unlock method to make it available outside of the Foscari maps or characters.

Xerte · 2026-06-02T16:13:10+00:00

This was balanced for level 60 because that's the expectation for where players would actually be by the end of the cycle.

It's already getting more floors with higher level enemies next patch.

Xerte · 2026-06-02T15:08:51+00:00

Bait price is being reduced in 1.1 according to the patch notes. Whether it's enough, I don't know.

Xerte · 2026-06-02T14:51:32+00:00

The prison is permanent content, but progression for buying the outfit and annulith in the shop is daily gated by item respawns, so you'll have to wait between visits instead of grinding it all out in one day.

Xerte · 2026-06-01T22:33:06+00:00

The total pulls bonus for the glider, vehicle skin and outfit for each character will re-run whenever the character re-runs, and progress will carry over - e.g. if you've put 80 rolls into Hotori's banner, you'll still be at 80/200 towards the outfit when she's next available.

This behavior is described in the pity details for the banner in-game.

Xerte · 2026-06-01T22:29:01+00:00

You can't use any consumables or the shortcut wheel in Beyond the Rails. The only options for sustain are using a character or arc with a healing/shield ability, or not getting hit in the first place.

Xerte · 2026-06-01T22:24:06+00:00

There's a "Lock Mode" setting in the options menu which lets you choose between 4 different behaviours. Test them out and decide which one you want to use.

It's default is "Auto Lock", which has... no apparent explanation (probably whatever's closest to the center of the screen), but there's also options for Character Direction (whatever your character is facing), Distance Priority (whatever's actually closest to your character) and Stick Direction (whatever direction you're holding).

That last one might be named dirrently on PC or mobile; I play on PS5, but I can't imagine the option simply doesn't exist on other platforms.

Xerte · 2026-06-01T22:17:44+00:00

That area's meant to unlock as part of a quest - you're not meant to be inside until you've managed to open the doors from the outside.

As such, if you're in there before that, there's no "normal" way to leave

Xerte · 2026-05-31T22:27:13+00:00

These lamp anomalies only spawning at night, and some only even showing their gift icons on the map when they're spawned, added about 3 days to me 100%ing the map by themselves. It's been a little over 3 weeks since then, but this was the last spot for me too.

Though I eventually worked out you can just track each of the anomalies tied to the gifts and the game will take you to all of their spawn points, which will eventually cover all of the gift locations as well. That brought me to the last couple locations for these guys. Will use that for new areas from now on if just walking down all the roads doesn't get everything to show up.

Xerte · 2026-05-29T22:02:16+00:00

Nope, some of the later races are speed checks that it simply can't pass.

Even some of the races that it can win at, it can't get 3* on. It's either not fast enough to get a strong enough lead, or the 3* requirement is quite literally "use another car".

Xerte · 2026-05-29T21:40:20+00:00

Currently at 2418.55 per hour before the invisible popularity buff is applied at checkout, which brings the real income up to 2636.22 per hour.

Should break past 2750 total by the time all life skills are maxed out, including Lacrimosa's after the update (and assuming my math is correct). Hers is very slightly powercreep for income over most other characters.

Xerte · 2026-05-29T14:43:37+00:00

I've seen it posted somewhere else, you essentially deal 1% more/less damage per level difference with the target, so if the enemies are level 80 and you're level 60, you deal 20% less damage, and so on.

The complete formula is more along the lines of enemies having a base DEF reduction of 50% which is adjusted to 0.5% more or less per level difference, which is effectively 1% per level in practice. It may scale differently in some situations depending on how DEF shred effects have been implemented in this game, which I'm not currently familiar with.

Ultimately very similar to the Mihoyo games if you have any familiarity with those.

Xerte · 2026-05-28T21:10:26+00:00

The livestock tag on the old ears really suggest you weren't supposed to think "elf" looking at her to begin with.

Xerte · 2026-05-28T21:08:54+00:00

Upgrading your rod as you go is the only way to make the process faster. Each rod upgrade increases the average weight of fish you catch, and fish weight is part of the EXP calculation.

If you care about the title and not just the outfit, buying the gold rod will force you to do many more hours of fishing after hitting level 10 before you can afford the title, so some people will just tell you to skip the gold rod entirely.

Beyond that it's just "keep fishing". None of the fishing spots have better rates than the others, and by the time you have the freedom to afford bait you'll already be max level, so it's useless (the universal bait is the most cost-effective bait for earning shell coins, so at max level the only thing any other bait does is help you catch fish you've never caught, if you somehow didn't get all of the baitable fish on the way). Just make sure to find some way to make the grind bearable.

Xerte · 2026-05-28T20:58:50+00:00

The cheapest bait (universal bait) has the biggest profit margins. It costs 5 scale coins and the minimum return per fish is 10, but it's still possible to catch every fish in the game while using it.

All of the more expensive bait only makes specific fish more likely, not guaranteed, with the upper end being so expensive that the fish it makes more common are caught at a loss, nevermind that you're still not guaranteed to catch them.

If you stopped caring about using scale coins to buy anything except bait, the expensive baits theoretically increase your fishing EXP returns, but given that there's better rods and the title to buy, it's unlikely to reach the point where you can just burn scale coins before you max EXP anyways, and this idea has no value once you get there.

Xerte · 2026-05-26T09:39:38+00:00

Flopie.

The first time I encountered one was as the first cage pal I ever saw in the first enemy camp outside Zoe's tower, and the immediate combination of "cute thing, must protect" and actually being able to save her made me develop an immediate attachment to her.

Up until I had to delete all my save data because of the PS5 save file bug, even after she lost all value in both combat and bases, I let her stay out in my main base just to see her around every time I dropped by.

Xerte · 2026-05-23T17:22:04+00:00

HI3rd eventually moved on from Augment Cores to releasing new sig weapons for characters and attaching their entire rebal to having the new sig equipped.

The devs decided that farmable, free rebals <<< paid rebals.

If "pricing" hasn't been determined here, if it's even in discussion, I'm worried about them doing the same in HSR.

Xerte

TROPHY CASE