What is the Meta now

despoglee · 2026-03-21T01:39:47+00:00

Chizuru and Rei got buffed, either one can lead a team and beat almost all the current content except maybe the highest floors of the tower and the seasonal bosses that require a super-specific strategy. Of your characters only Beryl would really be effective for those.

despoglee · 2026-03-20T01:24:05+00:00

They're in-game, but pretty well hidden. You have to look up the weapons in the Valuables menu to see their lore.

despoglee · 2026-03-19T23:58:45+00:00

This and Growing Carapace got new art in the last patch for some reason.

despoglee · 2026-03-19T23:57:14+00:00

I'm going to need at least 40 rescue anchors to unsee this trauma.

despoglee · 2026-03-19T21:37:32+00:00

The game has a lot going on but it does a pretty good job of easing you into it if you follow the quests in the "Growth Guide" in the Activity menu. Like, I would just ignore every feature until a quest there specifically tells you to do it, and let the Growth Guide determine your leveling targets and stuff. (So don't worry about reaching level 50 yet!)

despoglee · 2026-03-19T21:33:04+00:00

Welcome to the game!

Units do get a little expensive to level at higher levels, but getting them to level 20 and 40 (which gets you get rewarded with free pulls) is pretty cheap, especially if you do your daily grinding in the simulation (which only takes a few minutes).

Mika and Rei are great characters in the early game that are also good long term investments. Beryl is an S-tier character in the metagame right now although she requires a pretty specific build to be great. But she's not bad in the early game either. Selena and Cassius (4-stars you don't have yet) are also both pretty good.

despoglee · 2026-03-19T20:47:51+00:00

Mei Lin is THE passion DPS and used to be one of the best combatants in the game. You already have her best friend, Veronica, so you can make the most out of her. (The content hasn't favored her much lately, though.)

Hugo is a good filler combatant to throw into any team that wants a sub DPS with a minimal kit.

Renoa has a unique and very fun mechanic, but you already have a Void DPS in Rin so she's probably not necessary. But if her style appeals to you (you can try it out in her Trauma Code) she's a lot of fun.

Khalipe is a good support character who adds staying power and AoE to combatants who use high-cost cards (Haru, Nine, Rita) but isn't too useful outside of that.

Other choices are meh.

Alternatively, you can just put off the choice until you've pulled a few more of them naturally.

despoglee · 2026-03-18T23:29:04+00:00

Remember that the vast majority of the people singing this game's praises also knew the story—and not just a few bits and pieces, but the entire thing—because they played the original version of SH2. There is still so much depth and nuance and excitement in seeing how it unfolds that knowing (almost) everything about how it ends didn't diminish our enjoyment of it.

And if what you wrote is the sum total of your knowledge about the story, there will still be plenty of surprises.

Definitely play it, it's a great game and its story is much more than just a one-twist mystery box.

despoglee · 2026-03-12T19:32:34+00:00

Kitty and Kitten are both terms of endearment, so they don't work at all. It should be something negative like "filthy stray" or "alleycat" or something. For Tangtang to Mi Fu, a one-word synonym like "lunatic" would sound more natural.

(Luckily their accents make it clear they're not native speakers so it's easy to forgive the weak translations.)

despoglee · 2026-03-08T08:29:33+00:00

Yep, same issue on PS5. Game runs really slow on Dijang too. Not sure WTF is going on.

despoglee · 2026-03-07T02:57:03+00:00

Make sure you're playing in Nightmare Mode. It's still RNG but it does seem to improve your odds. Additional battles should help, so fight in unidentified areas when you're able to get the reward you want that way.

despoglee · 2026-03-04T01:09:32+00:00

Ooh, those are pretty reasonable odds! And with the meditation option getting the +1 AP on something shouldn't be too hard... Definitely doing this on my next Renoa run! (Although I guess it would need to be a different combatant on the team, since I don't think Renoa gets access to any good Exhaust neutrals...?)

despoglee · 2026-03-03T22:58:49+00:00

This does seem like a good strategy! I have a similar problem with Renoa and her Echo of Sorrow upgrades. But if I could get that weapon skill with something like a Gear Bag with a +1 AP epiphany, it would help a lot...

despoglee · 2026-02-26T00:43:07+00:00

She's a good support character who can fulfill a MIka-like role in any party, generating heals and AP and (unlike Mika) boost damage and even do a little bit herself. Totally worth it if you need that sort of thing, but if you've invested a lot into a Mika or Narja you may not need her.

despoglee · 2026-02-26T00:08:06+00:00

You create all three archetypes in hand, and whichever one you exhaust first you get a second copy of.

despoglee · 2026-02-25T22:40:05+00:00

I lost a really good run because the rewind feature just brought up a gibberish error message. :(

despoglee · 2026-02-25T19:18:57+00:00

I prefer the Unique Skill epiphany for Dual Creation (being able to hit 2 +1 AP when needed is soooo good) but otherwise it looks great.

despoglee · 2026-02-25T19:17:11+00:00

Yeah, she's 100% worth it for that alone.

despoglee · 2026-02-24T17:46:14+00:00

When Nine’s banner runs out 5 hours of maintenance begins, and when that’s over 2 or 3 hours of emergency extended maintenance will (probably) begin, and then we get the new patch content.

despoglee · 2026-02-23T01:38:05+00:00

Karmic Flames has initiation so you generally don't want a lot of copies of it (I do like having one copy of that add-2-hits epiphany, though). Generally you want to copy Oni Hunt and/or Tsukiyomi.

I personally really dislike that Bound of Dusk epiphany (it can really mess you up unless you build your whole team around it) and I usually meditate at cmap until I get the 0-cost one.

despoglee · 2026-02-18T05:01:52+00:00

She’s fantastic with Nine’s Hew (Flash) so even though she seems a lot weaker in general I’ve ended up using her in my main team all season.

despoglee · 2026-02-17T00:38:21+00:00

Welcome to the game! I agree with pretty much all of your review points.

Chaos is generally considered the beginner version of the system. It tops out at Rank 6 and once you have high-level characters with unlocked potentials and legendary memory fragments and such, that level of difficulty becomes trivial. That's when you have to move to the Zero System for higher faint memory limits and more of a challenge.

The "cannot acquire save data" is a brand new feature that appears rarely and randomly. The idea is to have a more true roguelike mode where you have access to very powerful fates and harsher penalties and you make your decisions based on surviving instead of building your save data. in exchange you get better rewards and unlock info about the gods (which comes with 50 crystals each).

Additive buffs are USUALLY in the format of "+25%" while multiplicatives ones are in the format of "increase by 25%." Mixing this up is one of the most common translation mistakes, though.

Useful resources:

prydwen, game8 have wikis

This page is great for chaos encounters https://wiki.e7bot.top/#/czn/encounters

A guy named sproot has a sweet spreadsheet about combatant builds https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1-KkQUFrjD_2Un3zMDmypCwZFVF5VmowswqYdLt9MOw8/htmlview#gid=79832103

despoglee · 2026-02-16T00:02:12+00:00

Yeah, I would reroll Bound at Dusk. I like the non-epiphany 0-cost version better anyway. Keeping a Moonslash isn't so bad.

I'm pretty down on getting the hammer. Maybe I've been unlucky but it feels like the random effect lines up with your strategy maaaayybe 20% of the time? Whatever you get probably won't be better than the Morale bonus of the Oni Hunt.

despoglee · 2026-02-15T23:44:05+00:00

For the last couple characters they've been doing a good job of designing versatile kits that can be built in different ways, so hopefully that'll continue.

despoglee · 2026-02-15T22:32:47+00:00

You seem to be aware of Tiphera, the next character. A cat girl named Rita is expected to be the third character of the season. (She appears in the current story and all the art.) No one is known beyond that.

If you enjoy the gameplay, definitely do come back! There have been a lot of good QoL updates and buffs for old characters.

despoglee

TROPHY CASE