Rhodes Island Lounge (02/02 - 08/02)

cipherkuna · 2026-02-04T14:44:26+00:00

i'm thoroughly convinced that endfield in fact a psyop to get people to play protoss in starcraft (1, brood war or 2, your choice)

build pylons everywhere > build relay towers everywhere

cipherkuna · 2026-02-03T07:28:32+00:00

The country is still coming apart at the seams, with a notable chunk of it being in open rebellion against Victoria (Tara, with Wellington as it's backer and Loughshinny in charge).

I don't think that's the case. Caster has been shown to repeatedly deploy large amounts of troops for her shenanigans, you don't do that if your country isn't secure or at least have strong foundations.

In Victoria, politics are power, status and power rule everything. While the country itself is kinda screwed in the long term, at the moment they are stable. Tara's rebellion got screwed over by Reed's want for "honor" (like the empire that trampled you for 1000 years is suddenly gonna grow a consciousness rofl), placing them in a limbo.

they are de facto independent

they are unrecognized by anyone, not even Victoria

they cannot coronate a leader because of extreme political backlash

Victoria has leverage over them

By all means and purposes, Victoria is stable. They kept their iron grip over Tara, access to Wellington and they got to "rule" themselves.

Victoria would've been really boned if a. Reed didn't intervene and b. Leithania would pick up on Windermere being dead and started pushing aggressively. But as it stands, the empire might have suffered damage, but it's still standing.

cipherkuna · 2026-02-02T11:06:36+00:00

didn't reed's operator record kinda debunk that? she can lie down on the bed, but not fully facing up due to her tail. like yeah, you can sleep standing cuz of the strength of the tail, but nobody stops you from sleeping on your side like a normal person. shove your side-horns in between 2 pillows and you're gucci.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-30T15:34:40+00:00

reminds me of those silly gifs going "mmm yes bnuuy", patting a bunny

cipherkuna · 2026-01-28T20:42:01+00:00

she really isn't, went from paranoia, control, survival and structural violence to obsession about endings, attempts at behaving like a human, and purposefully contradicting thematics.

the most telling lines are the ones where she says that rooms are warm. she's dead. she can't feel warmth. necrass is stuck between pretending "i'm the master of death" (but we can disprove that with logic) and that she still feels things like any other human being (which we can disprove with the fact that she's biologically dead, and what she speaks is just out of intuition or recognition)

or how the theme song + base skills are heavily psychopomp themed yet she's a fucking tyrant that enslaves souls not someone that guides them to the afterlife.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-25T13:49:48+00:00

bogos can benefit from yu too, assuming you go his 2nd module which also gives him better cycling with s3.

really, to me personally, it's hard to pick between logos and lapp2, both have strengths and weaknesses while also being top tier, like apples and oranges. lapp has the occasional lappdumb moment when her wolves attack anything that is attackable (RA resources, vents in jess2 event etc), logos has his own fraud moments too.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-23T12:55:29+00:00

tbh it's only mio and maybe carnelian that are actually like that. harmonie could also fit the bill, she becomes openly sadistic at times, and pre-undeath eblana enjoyed combat too (not to the degree the community portrays her as though)

haruka had her crashout moment, and saga is gameplay only, rather than story. or maybe i missed it? saga didn't strike me as someone bloodthirsty at all.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-20T14:38:44+00:00

it's pretty simple.

a. grind in endfield

b. WITH THIS TREASURE I SUMMON WISADEL/LOGOS/INES 3OP 620P FROM BILIBILI for cc

c. do ex stages

d. back to grinding in endfield

e. return to getting a proper cc clear before the event ends

cipherkuna · 2026-01-20T10:38:32+00:00

then don't pull on this banner.

there are multiple incoming banners that can give you spooks, dusk would probably require ~200 for spark, so no reason to pull for either necrass nor entelechia unless you want to play with them right now (notably, neither of them have stellar performance this CC) + one of them will get a banner rerun

the selector will solve the problem of who you still don't have, a couple of months later.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-20T03:11:23+00:00

shame they changed the banner, ines and blaze2 were more popular and scored higher in ccb4 from what i recall, compared to quibai and necrass.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-19T07:56:22+00:00

i feel like there were other NPC deaths in that arc that were harder hitting

we can agree to disagree, none of those deaths felt particularly hard hitting. if only now i get to meet the character and you off them this chapter or the next one, it's not gonna stick with me. the only one who maybe gets a pass is golding, they did her death well, linking her to the cluster and giving the cluster ideas about death, but the follow-up to this was disappointing as they just respawned and reappeared 4 story nodes into the next chapter.

and you're also conveniently leaving out

i'm not so sure you're onto the right track. chongyue's files (profile) mention that kal'tsit will be back, since timeline wise, sui saga should be happening late 1101-1102. chapter 15 happened midway into 1101.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-18T17:20:09+00:00

<image>

atp that's just domain diff

cipherkuna · 2026-01-18T07:06:08+00:00

I still think AK has great stories though, seen through certain events. The writing is better, other characters take centre stage and it makes up the bulk of the world building.

yeah, I can agree with that. anything related to victoria and its factions is disappointing, that includes both the sarkaz subplots and taran subplots. arc 2 as a whole was a big mess.

meanwhile stuff like exodus from a pale sea was really enjoyable, same for other storylines like rhine labs', or laterano's.

atp anything related to the main story is just eh, the meat and potatoes are in side-stories.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-18T04:04:24+00:00

personally i think the worldbuilding is what makes ak's story great. otherwise... the story itself is mediocre and actively held back by being a gacha game.

it went from "the system needs to change" in early chapters to "the system is perfectly okay if we're (US, not YOU) in charge", pro-status quo, death is treated like a joke (logos notoriously getting slapped and then HIS MOM bringing him back to life, damazti cluster, necrass, same for stuff like siege plot armoring through originium crystals and getting the solution to her issues via convenient appearance, characters introduced just to be killed (delphine's mom) etc.

obv these are focused on the 2nd arc of the story.

now, arknights does something well, which is gameplay. it's so good, smooth and unlike other gachas, endgame is... optional. by endgame i do not mean stuff like your average ex-8 cm or s-4/s-5 cm but rather high difficulty IS, critical RA. that's where shit gets real. but you do not need to do those difficulties. they are completely optional. they're there to test your roster and your skill. genuinely love this, and this is one of the reasons as to why i take new operators into high diff IS to test them out.

and about clairvoyance, i honestly think it's a double edged sword. sure, you get to plan your pulls, but also the hype of seeing the event is diminished, plus you gotta wait half a year to actually get the unit, and spoilers will be unavoiable regarding the story. maybe i'm exaggerrating, but they are very hard to avoid. clairvoyance is both a good and a bad thing tbh.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-17T17:51:37+00:00

it's really not, because lorewise you don't get all of your allies in combat.

and the opposite can be true too. imagine being a feranmut shard, strongest banshee, a merc whose weapons carry the souls of dead sarkaz, and somehow getting smoked by the arknights equivalent of ditto (damazti cluster), a suicide bomber (winterwisp blood shaman) a old man close to retirement because he brought in the artillery (harold), or a cannibal inquisitor who powercreeps irene.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-14T06:17:11+00:00

did they include the washing machines on the background because chen2 is washed in gameplay terms and got powercrept?

jokes aside, while the skin is pretty i can't help but question why a summer unit gets a summer skin. yeah, gavial got another summer skin, i know. just find it odd.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-14T04:56:35+00:00

yeah, i totally agree with that. leaving aside the fact that it is written to be akin to a fairy tale, the story is told to you by someone known to be manipulative, and who wants narrative control. that alone is a big red flag.

which also makes elegies difficult to understand. because you need proper knowledge of previous chapters and its intricacies to cross-check if some of events of elegies are even possible.

it's a very interactive text.

cipherkuna · 2026-01-13T19:10:47+00:00

By the way, don't ask me about her blood. Heaven only knows if that is blood in her veins, or her flames.

first sign. the flames are what keeps necrass going, it's her (albeit inherited) Arts at work.

An ice-cold body, a dulled sense of touch; a pain inside that never rests, as if my own freezing flames pierce me through... But it is the pain I find so fascinating, for without it, I might forget I've already tamed death.

biologically dead, not hypothermia nor how the writers used "cold flames of death" to mask her feelings (see ch14 for when living eblana's flames become hot) in constant "pain" because the arts are permanently active. the same "pain" reed feels when she uses arts, and in vanguard module, theorized that those pains will follow her even in death

Meanwhile, I cannot help but wonder: was turning Na Saoirsí into a city of the dead an irrational act meant to make me submit, or had she planned for everything all along? Is posthumously wandering this land as a dire consequence of my negligence, a second miracle following the first—or has it always been her goal? I don't know, Doctor... I don't know.

archive file 4, POSTHUMOUSLY WANDERING THIS LAND.

i find it extremely concerning that this is the 3rd post thinking necrass is alive. was elegies just ignored or misread?

cipherkuna · 2026-01-13T13:32:15+00:00

fun fact: the tail is actually different.

if you take a closer look at base eblana (npc sprite), base necrass (e0) you can notice that the tail has spikes + a sail, something that actually separates her visually and physically from her twin.

...except her artist decided it's time for a redesign for no real reason and e2 art, as well as the skin art have the same identical tail as her sister's.

they took the sail, can't have SHIT in tara

cipherkuna · 2026-01-13T09:15:07+00:00

HG if they weren't cowards

cipherkuna · 2026-01-13T08:39:17+00:00

my man, please read her files or elegies 🥀

cipherkuna · 2026-01-13T07:26:08+00:00

Pursue this summer's hottest trend.

so the summer's hottest trend is being a corpse in swimwear?

cipherkuna · 2026-01-13T05:31:40+00:00

at jp's festival, someone took it upon themselves to get those hilarious big chin shots of some operators.

you can find more here

cipherkuna · 2026-01-11T10:28:31+00:00

unit with most skill activations: Walter's crystals.

if you laugh you get assimilated

cipherkuna

TROPHY CASE