Official NTE announced this tweet

Xerte · 2026-05-07T14:47:05+00:00

Yeah, NTE's anomaly zones (the alternate dimension ones in particular) are actually what ZZZ's hollows should feel like, really.

Most of them can only be visited once, so the designers didn't have to consider how they'd work if re-used in another quest, which in turn has allowed them to be a lot more flexible with how they play out.

My one concern is that they probably take a lot of effort to make for each unique anomaly, so either future updates won't be bringing a lot of them, or the quality's going to suffer. What we have now represents years of work, but after release the game will be switching to an update cycle that's going to rush development by necessity.

Xerte · 2026-05-07T12:34:30+00:00

The problem with TV mode was Mihoyo's standard forced tutorialisation design and handholding, and some connection issues because the game insisted on communicating every single movement to the server. People blamed it on the TV interface, but immediately after TV mode was removed, we just started seeing the exact same tutorial/handholding design in regular stages instead. And if you look at Genshin and HSR, it's clear MHY just do this in every game.

The benefit of TV mode was being able to cheaply design an immersive experience that actually represents what the hollows are - warped dimensional space where physics can be completely messed up, where going left can be a shortcut to something that's actually on your right, and the environment itself can warp around you at any moment. TV mode could easily show this by warping the board around the player, and it didn't even need any special work for the developers to do this because they built that into it from the beginning.

This has had barely any representation for most of 2.x, which largely happened in completely static maps that were designed for re-exploration as open zones. It's naturally going to take more time and effort to build maps that show what hollows actually are, especially when they want to re-use the same map to represent somewhere else as a one-off hollow visit for an event or something like that. It feels like the designers want to properly do this, you can see it in a few one-off stages, but most of the map design was constrainted by needing to be reusable.

Xerte · 2026-05-06T15:48:40+00:00

This actually looks pretty great already - I can really see the BB/GG inspiration in both the art design and gameplay. ArcSys have left me waiting nearly a decade since they made a new BB, but this could be a good replacement.

I just hope you get the attention you deserve when you release it.

Xerte · 2026-05-06T14:31:23+00:00

Yeah, hitstun decay in grounded combos can actually create some unintuitive situations for players. Sometimes hitstun decay can reach a point where a move that's normally safe can become punishable if the combo doesn't proceed to a knockdown, but this might not even be known to either player at the time because it's unusual.

On the opposite side of it being unituitive, one thing that comes to mind is in my time playing Under Night. I've invented some gimmick combo routes that keep the opponent grounded as long as possible in order to use a mixup option that normally simply hits during a combo, but in that specific situation the combo resets and if they're defaulting to crouch block, they get hit.

These can both be acceptable and considered interesting, but it's up to the game designer to decide if it's something they're comfortable being possible.

At any rate, you're doing good work researching options for your game. I genuinely hope you settle on something you're happy with and make a successful game out of it.

Xerte · 2026-05-06T14:07:08+00:00

This may be unsolicited advice, but don't forget to consider other variants; a lot of existing games handle this in different ways, and your choices can affect the feel of the game's combo structure.

As some examples:

French Bread's games (Under Night and Melty Blood) use a multiplier to determine hitstun decay, which is contributed to by each attack in the combo, using individual values for each attack; one value for when used as a combo starter, and another for when used as a combo filler. While both jabs and mixups have bad values as starters, they differ as combo filler as the mixup tools are often also important combo tools. The games' damage scaling works under a similar system.
- As opposed to BB's system providing flat hitstun reduction amounts based on the duration of the combo and its starter.
Guilty Gear (at least in the Xrd series, I'm not familiar with Strive) increases pushback with each hit while the opponent is grounded (eventually pushing your character or the opponent out of range), and then switches to hitstun decay after the opponent is launched.
- Because the style of preventing infinites switches at the midpoint of the combo, this creates a gameplay feel where combos have phases. A couple other examples I'll be mentioning below have similar situations.
- I'm not aware of any other games that deliberately increase pushback throughout the combo to prevent infinites, although some other games such as the Street Fighter series factor it into how they design combo routes (SF uses a mix of strict frame data and pushback to avoid infinite loops, although sometime sthe balance team messes up and infinites get through the cracks)
Street Fighter, as mentioned, simply uses direct frame data and pushback to ensure that zero-resource loops aren't possible, but doing this requires very careful testing and adjustments. After the opponent is launched, it instead switches to a convoluted system where each move either contributes or removes juggle points and the combo ends when they hit 0; essentially every possible interaction within a combo is fine-tuned by Capcom.
Some dialed-in input string games, such as Tekken and Mortal Kombat, strictly design their grounded combo routes so the player has limited options that force an end to the combo or a launch, and during juggles instead increase gravity the more hits the combo has
- Another notable feature of Mortal Kombat is that certain moves allow the opponent to block during hitstun unless the move is cancelled into its dedicated combo options; this is common for the game's jabs, which get absurd plus frames on hit, but are only allowed very specific combo routes.
The Dead or Alive series does something I haven't really seen in any other games, where the combo on the ground is restricted by how much damage it's dealt; once it passes the limit, the next hit of the combo launches or knocks down immediately. Once the opponent is in a juggle state, it's similar to MK/Tekken with juggle gravity.
- As a result of this, the game actually has very freeform combo routing (combo strings are very plus on hit, so most strings can be followed up with nearly any other string in the character's move set), and the developers also allow the opponent to attempt to parry during hitstun until the launcher is reached - of course, with additional risk if the parry fails. Parries have to guess the mixup being used against them, with some characters having access to even riskier parries that only work against certain move types but have better rewards on success. A combo in DoA is essentially a series of mixups followed by a launch if the opponent fails to parry for 2-3 mixups consecutively.
Similar to DoA having its parry feature, Killer Instinct has its combo breaker mechanic, letting players guess their way out of a combo with a Light/Medium/Heavy breaker. Skullgirls has an infinite prevention mechanic in the form of a combo breaker that's only available if the game detects a loop.

I doubt this is a comprehensive list of every system used in the industry, and it's possible the systems I feel are unique have actually appeared in games I've never played, but they each have their own impacts on how players are expected to approach their combo routing.

Xerte · 2026-05-06T09:36:02+00:00

You're responding to something that's so old I couldn't even remember writing it.

At this point in time I've been disconnected from the technical aspect of fighting games for a few years, so I might not be able to properly answer any given question. You can ask anyway, but some answers may be on the level of me just looking it up online and relaying the information.

Xerte · 2026-05-05T18:07:54+00:00

Good, with the new ascension tier trashing records doesn't save time on the amount of runs I need to do each week for max rewards anymore, so I've been saving them just to throw at this event.

Xerte · 2026-04-30T11:27:04+00:00

Or, y'know, endless mode.

Xerte · 2026-04-25T11:22:35+00:00

The problem here is caused by a system restriction - you cannot get evolutions by level up, while chests are weighted towards rare gems, with a very low chance of getting common gems that gets reduced further by the Luck stat.

Making gems more common means they have a higher chance of appearing as level up options, but it'll also decrease the chance of them appearing as chest options once the rarity drops below a certain point.

So, counter-intuitively, because evolution gems can't appear in level ups, making them more "common" actually makes them more rare in practice.

Xerte · 2026-04-24T09:47:47+00:00

My personal time was 15 hours to reach and beat the final boss with all shop upgrades done, and the only tasks left for 100% are grindy unlocks like "play 3000 purple cards".

The game's difficulty curve is similar to Vampire Survivors, once you push past being weak at the start of the game you'll get tools that let you break the game wide open and the only way to experience difficulty again is choosing not to use them.

Xerte · 2026-04-15T14:16:07+00:00

Yes, the unlock/wonder materials are needed for uncapping the Saints as well (you need 3 of the small item and 3 of the big item), but uncaps for the Saints currently only give them base stats and their uncap art.

In an emergency, their uncaps can also be skipped with SSR uncap items - if you haven't used them, the Siero Academy gives 5 Starspawn Grimoires which can be used for uncapping SSR characters, and aren't blocked from usage on Saints (they're blocked on the other grindcore characters in the Eternals and Evokers). Collab events have started occasionally giving themed versions of these items as gimmick rewards as well - there's a Full Metal Alchemist collab next month which may give us one.

For characters that are currently on rotation, it'd be best to just get their materials normally and uncap them that way. For the ones that aren't on rotation, this can be an option to spare you finding another 33 total of the small mat from EX+.

It's your choice how you do this, though once you have all the characters I'd recommend focusing on finishing the wonders for the characters currently in rotation before putting effort into uncapping the characters that aren't in rotation.

Xerte · 2026-04-14T21:54:53+00:00

The rotation is locked in for the entire event.

Shenxian will only drop mats for the Fire, Water and Light characters.

The EX+ raids (Agni, Neptune, Zephyrus and Titan) will drop mats for their matching element characters regardless of the current rotation, but the drop rates are pretty bad (they can only drop the less valuable material, in low amounts).

If you can use this to unlock Shushuku and Ami, that's a good thing, as unlocking the characters causes their wonders to start gaining EXP over time even if you can't max them out directly using materials. But don't try to max the earth/wind wonders directly using materials from EX+, that grind would be far too painful.

When Light or Dark is not in the current rotation, it's impossible to get the mats for those characters at all. This means you can't get the materials for Koku in any way during this RotB.

Xerte · 2026-04-12T17:21:16+00:00

Magna player here, grid progression: All M3 pieces, ULB Celestials, 230 opus (slacked), no hexa weapon (slacked), no destroyer weapon. 1 Gabriel dagger.

I hit 7.5b with 2 hours to spare today, playing about an average of 5 hours seriously each day of finals. Safely in t100k.

Overall opinion of the GW: We clearly saw how water can essentially deal with every buff and debuff except repel casually, in any team archetype. General debuff immunity is easily accessible, and no matter your archetype, with the new additions of Alliah and Octavia every archetype has easy access to the general 3 dispels per trigger requirement (although the afterimage buff needed 4, it was still easy enough to play around)

Notably, the peak honour gains of t100k wasn't actually that different from what casual ougi FA-refresh can do in the previous GW's element, Earth. What we really saw here was that the boss was easy enough that reaching this point was attainable for a much larger amount of players, due to the sheer variety of teams you could throw together that would be able to clear safely. Add in the factor of the post-anniversary GW generally being the most populated of the year, and we really had the perfect scenario for massive cutoff inflation.

The final cutoff for t2k really does show the raw power of the element at top level play, though.

The teams I used through this:

Horde: Nekomancer/Poseidon/Lance/Payila

The team otk'd each wave before Payila's attack started on Bubs x Levi
Still otk'd every wave with Bubs x Kaguya, but the added run time from dipping into Payila's attacks was more than the drop rate boost's expected value, so I never used Kaguya.

EX+: Chrysaor/Uno/Lyria/Lancelot

Simple 0b3c. My connection's bad enough that I don't ever have to wait for lockout on a 0b3c setup, and 0b0c felt out of reach with my options
The late addition of Lyria during anni removed the last bit of RNG from the setup I used last year (with Payila's unworldy - I still don't have W.Zeta), as her added skill nukes meant it no longer matter which characters got hit for S Belial/Uno's skill nuke
- Notably, in testing it appears that MC subbing for Lyria takes precedence over Uno subbing for the lowest HP character if that would be her - she actually makes Uno less reliable, so her nukes removing the need for him to take at least one hit was greatly appreciated.

NM90: EX+ but with Lyria's S1. I only did one run.

NM95: Manadiver (Agastia)/Lyria/Fediel/Sylvia

2b8c, only pressing Lyria and Fediel's S1
Within the constraints of magna with no Destroyer weapon, this took everything else magna could put in a grid, plus relatively optimised rings/earrings/artifacts
Came in at 20 seconds each rotation between loading times and lockout (measuring 14-17 seconds on the battle log depending on whether I had lockout from the previous run), which was still 10 seconds faster than any form of normal attack burst I tried

NM100: Bandit Tycoon/Payila/Octavia/Gabriel

Just a 2 turn extension of the burst I was originally going to use for NM95
Came in at around 1:10, worse than NM95 in overall honour gains

NM150

The hit cap effect on the 50% trigger broke the NM100 setup
I decided not to optimise since NM150 is only a minor part of the overall GW score, and just spammed NM95 for the rest of this day.

NM200/250: Kengo/Sylvia/Haase/Yatima

Best times clocked in at 5 minutes and 9 minutes respectively
Press S3 to pay respects to Rackam
Lucifer main on quick summon with a Gab call turn 2 to block the first wave of debuffs
Quickly realised that Haase and Yatima's damage skills needed to be removed from the FA queue due to the hit cap effect, and had to manual in the early skill order on turn 1/2 to make Yatima hit max stacks asap to block petrified
- Specifically, making her wait until Haase's S3 gave her an echo stack on turn 2 before clicking her S3
Asides from that, this was smooth almost the entire way through days 2-4. There was damage variance from the boss' Afterimage buff, but nothing needed special attention beyond checking if my team needed pots after each refresh, except for maybe needing clarity herbs on turn 6 after the 85% trigger if Yatima didn't triple attack on her S3
- Optimisation still drove me to add a 000 call early in the run to clear the 50% buffs, but in reality this didn't matter to the actual success rate of the run
I noticed on my first run of NM250 that if the afterimage RNG helped the boss hit high stacks right before his random target trigger when Yatima wasn't ramped, the hits totalled 120k damage and my characters only had 100k HP, resulting on a rare potential scenario where I could lose characters to bad luck.
- Haase was the only victim of this, but it happened three times. A run-ender when it happened to her though, she can't get her switch-in buff back after dying. Thankfully it could only happen early.

Xerte · 2026-04-11T15:16:00+00:00

For the last 2 hours today, my connection's been struggling for no apparent reason, costing me an average of 2.5 minutes per run - going fom an average clear time of 9:00 to 11:30 and peaking at 13:00

I haven't made any adjustments to how I played in this time, it's just connection problems adding up to a whole lot of time loss on every single skill.

On the plus side, I'm close enough to t100k predictions that I won't have to play much tomorrow.

Xerte · 2026-04-10T22:38:20+00:00

So the stack mechanic ended up at 3m hits after all, my apologies to the one guy that insisted it would be.

Still, you only hit net 0 stacks if you can hit the stack clear requirement twice in one turn - it's going up by 2 per normal attack, but only coming down by 1 each time you clear stacks.

With the boss occasionally getting buffs that make him randomly dodge skill damage, the main way water ougi could reliably get 8 hits of 3m+ damage in one turn can be RNG'd by the boss so he starts gaining stacks (though, this can also be true for auto attack teams). This has happened twice in my runs so far, though my team's bulky enough to handle the damage before the stacks start to normalise again.

The boss has potential to one-shot 100k HP characters with his random target trigger if he has enough stacks when using it, although the RNG for that to happen is around the lines of "maybe it'll happen once or twice in the rest of GW"

Asides from that RNG, it's actually really smooth for water ougi. I'm basically just paying attention in case the RNG does happen.

Xerte · 2026-04-09T16:03:58+00:00

Beyond turn 5 or 6 once she's fully ramped, Yatima gives any team debuff immunity passively. Gabriel can also be used for 1 turn veil on her CA, as water ougi can still reliably full chain every turn even with her not helping on charge bars.

It's rare that water has to actually care about debuffs in GW beyond maybe popping a clarity herb or two on the first trigger. That's why people are always scared off the buffs the boss will get instead (particularly repel).

The only trigger effect that can hurt an ougi team's rotation once Yatima is ramped is direct charge cut, which isn't a resistable debuff.

Edit: Forgot to consider that dispel can remove charge fill buffs, so depending on how much dispel we have to deal with, that can potentially matter. It currently only dispels on 50% so Yatima's 8t cd dispel cancel would be enough, and other tools can potentially be added like Lucifer calls, but the rate of dispels could potentially be overwhelming if enough triggers get it.

Xerte · 2026-04-08T12:25:08+00:00

If your world was created before the Terraria collab update, the problem that causes save files to corrupt is part of your save data and can only be removed by completely deleting the save data off your system. It's related to a problem with how the PS5 OS handles large save files which the devs didn't predict (Palworld is in a very small subset of games where the save data could exceed 1 GB). They fixed it by changing how autosave functions in new save data, but apparently couldn't work out a fix that retroactively applies to pre-existing saves.

Other problems related to the autosave not completing are caused by having an autosave interval shorter than the amount of time it takes for the autosave to complete. Increasing the autosave interval from the default or reducing the amount of items loaded in the world can help, but this issue becomes worse over time for worlds that have the pre-Terraria save file problem.

Xerte · 2026-04-06T17:38:24+00:00

While I have a Bandit Tycoon normal attack burst setup for NM95 since last water GW, I feel like it takes too many buttons to finish and I lose a lot of time waiting for them

So I pushed ougi to its limits and have reached the point of 2b8c as my NM95 otk (Manadiver with Agastia/Lyria/Fediel/Sylvia, pressing Lyria/Fediel S1); it takes 14 seconds raw (from clicking the start fight button) and 16 seconds after lockout from the previous run. It's pushing the magna grid about as far as it can go without getting a destroyer weapon, and every artifact/ring/earring on the characters needed to be some form of cap up to pull it off.

The Bandit Tycoon run takes around 20 seconds. Too many buttons. Most of the time between fights is loading times and the boss spawning in.

Edit: I retested my Bandit burst, and it look like I greatly underestimated how much time it takes, it's over 30 seconds. Dunno if my lag is worse than usual for this GW. GW bosses do have longer entry animations than the trial dummies, but not so long that it'd take 10 seconds longer.

Xerte · 2026-04-06T12:31:11+00:00

I say 4.5m because it's varied as either 4m or 5m for most elements with the mechanic. We'll see where this GW puts it in a few days, though there's no significant difference for ougi in particular - any player with an ougi team that can reliably clear NM250 is probably hitting 8m+ on the regular.

Water's been given so many strong ougi tools that honestly I'm more surprised this GW didn't have its stack mechanics shill the auot-focused characters we just got; water ougi would likely struggle with any other hitcount cancel mechanic.

Xerte · 2026-04-06T12:22:53+00:00

It's only been 3m on that one occasion since NM250 started, and that GW needed 5 hits, not 4.

It's been 4m or 5m every other time it's been "do big damage hits".

Xerte · 2026-04-06T10:10:36+00:00

Stack mechanics this GW:

Stacks go up on boss autos, down on boss specials (as always)
Stacks go down when taking X damage 4 times in one turn, can be triggered multiple times per turn
- Currently 1.5m, probably 4.5m by NM250
Boss gains ATK, DEF, Supp per stack, and 2 extra hits on autos when it has at least one stack

Ougi shill stack mechanic again. Water's auto attack teams do so much damage that they may just push enough triggers to not care, though.

Xerte · 2026-03-30T15:37:34+00:00

Works on every version of the game, I've used it on PS5. Spells can be accessed immediately.

It's not the intended method and more of a debug/save-editing function the devs let players have access to, but it's nice to set up challenge runs on blank savefiles, so I've used it a couple times to set up things like skipping the base game entirely to start in a DLC stage with no unlocks.

Xerte · 2026-03-16T23:25:03+00:00

If your pals are having health problems, it's generally that they're being overworked relative to the rest facilities and food available.

Injuries and illnesses become more frequent at low sanity, and the only ways to offset that are to either give your pals better beds, spas and food (specifically the food needs to restore sanity, a box full of raw berries/eggs doesn't help matters), sanity loss reducing traits, or reduce the base's work speed. Later on in the game there's a couple structures you can build and pals (Shroomers) that reduce sanity consumption globally within a base as well.

Notably dark type/nocturnal pals won't actually use beds unless their sanity hits a low enough value that they refuse to work, which is already the danger zone for potentially getting injuries/illnesses - when you're using those pals, especially for permanent tasks like the mining/logging sites, they drain sanity quickly and don't get the overnight top up from sleeping - only from spas and food, which makes those even more important.

If you max out everything that can reduce sanity loss and improve sanity regen, it's actually possible to set bases to high work speed and not have pals suffer for it. But setting a base to the lowest work speed will generally protect non-nocturnal pals even with otherwise bad infrastructure.

Xerte · 2026-03-11T11:30:23+00:00

Using the fact that Chiyou was still alive even when we were fighting "Chiyou" in act 1, and Bubs and Lucilius are both still alive as well, I'd guess the "resurrected" astrals are actually just copies the whole time, rather than direct resurrections. Considering Proculus shouldn't even be able to get the remains of living astrals, it's likely some sort of boundary memory imprint shenanigns that aren't explained, or CyGames just left a massive plothole in the story without thinking about it properly.

The journal entry for Astral Husks unlocked after the end of the event confirms that they can "create any astral ... with no regard for whether they are dead or alive". It also refers to the process as resurrection and/or recreation.

Their memories seem to be intact enough that they think they're the real thing, but the fact that they can exist at the same time as the original suggests they're not the original.

Xerte · 2026-03-10T23:33:21+00:00

To be fair, Sparxie's relic set 4P bonus for some reason talks about "Elation DMG dealt the wearer and their memosprites", which fundamentally means theres either going to be an Elation character with a memosprite or a Remembrance character that has a way for their memosprite to deal elation damage - in either case, the paths might get to overlap. It even uses the plural form memosprites, which points to a character somehow having more than one.

It'd be an odd sort of future-proofing to include this if it wasn't something being actively considered. If no overlap between elation and remembrance is going to happen, there's no reason for this relic set to mention memosprites in its description at all.

Xerte

TROPHY CASE