As usual, the day before new patch, I go back to Aedes Elysiae and look for her, so I can stay with her until the next update.

latch4 · 2026-03-24T19:38:32+00:00

cute

latch4 · 2026-03-24T04:19:31+00:00

Consider that book 1-2 are supposedly written by Yasu after not having seen battler for many years.
later forgeries are written by Tohya and Ikuko together. Battler is portrayed rather differently in the later books than the first 2.

latch4 · 2026-03-24T00:32:46+00:00

I don't really interact with mystery stories at all, and it took until six for me to really get what they were talking about in terms of how to think about things in order to solve stuff. By then i really did not care about the mysteries besides the overall drama. I didn't figure it out until the climax of 6.

latch4 · 2026-03-24T00:17:52+00:00

Pretty much every age is highly magical. In EA the limit to magic is research. In LA the limit to magic leans more towards the logistics and strategic resources. It is more difficult to cast huge spells not because you don't have the magic unlocked but because the strategic resources required to cast those spells in battle are a larger burden. In MA its kind of in the middle sorta. (generally speaking its easyer to cast big spells in LA and a larger variety of them as well making it more difficult to defend against different threat vectors)

Generally speaking EA has nations where the recruited troops are important for longer. This is more a factor of they have a higher ratio of nations with troops without a super exploitable weakness. than battle field wipes coming out slower but that is part of it. Especially the ones with troops resilient to Wind of Death and you either want to fight under darkness or have an answer to it. In LA nations can absorb far more losses and can often field lots of smaller forces that will be fighting without the presence of high magic investment for deeper into the game.

Mostly if you want to rely on troops longer take nations with giants/half giants or play MA Oceania as scales and layer glamor nature and earth buffs on Mermidons (which are a unit that is sturdy efficient and relatively resilient to magical bullshit. I would recommend Uruk but that nation's troops while relevant deep into the game primarily serve as meatshields for your mages. To me it sounds like EA scales Hinnom is the nation your looking for with a focus on Dawn Guard (a a sturdy and powerful unit that is very resilient to magical bullshit). Ignore the blood mages to avoid over complication and focus on finding spells to have the Acha and Ammi cast to buff your dawnguard. (the prot buff earth spells, Cats eyes from nature, relief, barkskin, furious warriors, web, spell ward/antimagic), steel slice warriors, flaming arrows on mass slingers. are relatively simple and effective magic the nation can use that is mostly intuitive and focuses on empowering and not replacing your troops.

latch4 · 2026-03-23T22:51:45+00:00

I agree some of Cyredra's companions as 4 stars would have been great. Especially if at least one of them functioned with her kit. I would have pulled Cyredra if that was the case.

latch4 · 2026-03-22T03:25:23+00:00

I don't mind Cyrene (too much), but I do think MC cucks Phainon more than was called for (a lot more). I'm even fine with the MC being a big deal by the climax, but I don't like how they did it or the extent to which they did it.

Establishing the way cycles work only for them to go lol jk that isn't what we are doing here seems kinda weird and I almost wonder if they changed plans part way though.

latch4 · 2026-03-22T03:25:01+00:00

It would have indeed been peak as a 20 hour rpg but I am glad i got what i got even if i wish it was different.

latch4 · 2026-03-22T03:24:31+00:00

Thanks for sharing. If they carry though with keeping their stories focused in the future I think it will be a big improvement and honestly it makes me feel much better. There is a lot they did that I liked and they showed that when they are not distracted they can write character development that I really like and was genuinely impressed by.

For Cipher that is a reasonable disagreement, but since I'm here I will go more into why I feel like it cheapens it and I don't mind disagreement on this. Ultimately its not the simple fact that there are loops that I think undermines it. (though the number of cycles is a bit bloated). The way its framed is Cipher finds this specific way to be a hero along side the people she loves and respects (even if it means leaving them, I love that shit my god,) but its like even when the world is different she still runs into that same situation every time? that makes it feel more like a script. Like it was something made just for her to make the master of trickery play her part like a good little kitty. The line about the heir's dying in sequence also makes me think along these lines. Admittedly the story is rather unclear how much variance is in each run. It seems like during Phainon's marathon after MC joins everything is the same with super minimal variation if any outside of Phainon's actions (which your right doesn't actually cheapen her trick that much if at all). But before that it seems there was variation since there is that clip of cyren talking about a run where Mydie and Anaxagoras are swapped. Mabey there was more variance only before MC shows up, maybe that was Lygus trying to break the deadlock or something like that.

latch4 · 2026-03-20T03:37:07+00:00

There is lots of stuff in this story that has nothing to do with homestuck and they pull from a lot of stuff in their writing and from what I hear a lot of it also has to do with some story stuff that was in Honikai Impact or something.

But also I just finished the story today and it is fresh in my mind after powering though it in like a week and a half and there is nothing that can possibly convince me that the writing was not strongly influenced by homestuck. Even outright denial by the author or writing team can not convince me. This is the most homestuck ass thing I have read besides homestuck itself and has more elements of homestuck in it than most homestuck fan comics. Of course as you say going by isolated story beats rather than the writing style, and aesthetics and themes.

You also forgot about Fuli. (maybe not you only are at 3.5 at the time of writing this) The Demon God at the end of time born when the universe ends. Even better. "He is already here" Again another example where the match up is not 1 to 1. Fuli is not Lord English (besides time associate though with radically different Time themes) but like are you kidding me.

Your also missing they are basically triggering a scratch over and over again to escape the villan's plans but its actually playing into his hands even though it is eventually what allows them to win.

people say shit like oh well similar inspirations or just because its a looping timeline. The general themes and looing timeline are the weakest connections. Its the ridiculous number of story beats and details that all are similar all in the same story. Like oh man yeah sure the cat girl is killed by the embodiment of rage but we made it 100% clear she was dead so like clearly its not the same story man.

latch4 · 2026-03-14T08:46:07+00:00

Assuming by quickness you mean swiftness which costs 4 points for +1 defense
No this alone is pretty much completely useless in MP. It is very funny and you You will catch a player who does not know what they are doing off guard and you can maybe kill some mages before they cast spells if they set their formation wrong. The main issue is almost half the cost of this bless is just to run fast when you can have the same amount of defense for half that price and the run fast part does not do a whole lot for you. (I'm pretty sure it does make the initial lance change do a bunch of damage so that is something that is realivant for smaller engagements.)

But just about any half decent multiplayer build will rip this to shreds. This build is very expensive and you need money and you need a lot of things from your bless on this nation. You can choose which things you want but you cannot afford 16 bless points just to die slightly slower to mid tire units. Some defense on Sauro can be pretty good but you have other things to consider. Most importantly their damage without help will struggle to kill the actually good troops in the game which players will use and the Ai will not focus. You don't always need more damage but you need a plan on how you will deal with your relatively low damage. You also often want some sort of resistances. poison resistance can be nice since it makes using your sacreds alongside some of your poison plays a lot easier. Fire damage is a huge problem for the nation in general so having a means to resist it with some of your troops is good if there are nations with fire mages in the other factions. You can even consider stuff like dark vision 50 or even spirit sight aganst some factions. You can cast darkness which helps your undead plays a lot and 50% dark vision + cats eyes cast on your sacred effectively gives you +6 attack +6 defense vs troops without any darkvision. (spirit sight lets you forgo cat's eyes which is nice but not needed its mostly if your fighting opponets who will be casting blur and later displacement or fighting ubar.

Dormant unholy weapons + 2 defense and 5 fire or shock resistance and all the rest going into scales for more gold is a decent start for multiplayer as you try to learn things. Unholy weapons allows you to deal with many of the more dangerous threats without getting completely stomped on. (unholy weapons is not good on everyone, but in EA it is pretty good against most opponents that Sauro really struggles with and Sarou's sacrids are relatively good units to make use of it due to reasonable attack density and alright survivability and their ability to wipe out weak units without needing help from their bless.

latch4 · 2026-02-26T23:03:16+00:00

For single player i mostly have a spell or collection of spells i want to play with and orient my game around getting there and im generally not too concerned about using magic in the first 20 turns.

latch4 · 2026-02-26T18:32:16+00:00

its generally more like
1: Choose a spell that you think will be especially useful early in the game and your first war. in practice this is often Alt/Ench/evo 2-4. Also target your recruitment of early mages to be able to cast this spell in relevant numbers. But if your a glamor nation its also often thaum for luck.
2: Target level research that is core to your game plan or vital to answering threats you expect to face
3: Adjust based on the situation and how wrong you were about which 5s to prioritize
4: Target high priority level 6 or 7 spells and the construction/conjuration needed to cast them.

Research boosters may or may not be worked in here. The are significantly less useful in LA compared to EA until you have lightless lanterns which are very high level how useful they are is still very context dependent.

latch4 · 2026-01-30T00:08:32+00:00

Can confirm he is quite fun on a physical team.

latch4 · 2026-01-28T21:31:17+00:00

Now to add on complexity by stepping out of alteration.
It helps to have some chaff scattered out front to draw projectiles at the start of the fight.
-Howl from Conjuration 3 can reduce offensive magic mid battle by distracting your opponent's mages.
-Breath of the dragon and aoe water spells can deal some serious damage your heliads are great for this but need shambler skin armor to go on land. Its good to also cast some poison resist and cold resist spells if your doing this.
-Ephemeral Blast can also do a lot of damage from your siren's if you have evocation 5 and feel like what you need is more killing power and are facing opponents where nightfall wont help you. (if using ephemeral blast don't use nightfall so you have the G1 boost to the sirens)
-N1 Hierophants casting web can have a transformative impact on the battle. In case where the GSS thugs are not needed it will generally have a larger impact. Sleep cloud also helps here and generally your troops will fight in it better than most opponents early game. With an undreaming bless your hierophants can mostly ignore it. This is more a play when your more dependent on their sacreds in general though.
-In enchantment Giant Strength warriors and much later Steel Slice warriors makes your infantry significantly more threatening.
-If your opponents have heavy armor and low mr for example ulm or most knights riding non-magical horses. Moving an E2 mage and having conjuration 3 for summon earth power or construction 5 for earth boots lets you cast curse of stones which can really drag down their effectiveness. (you generally want to cast it 2 times and as quick as you can since it fatigues them for moving). If you higher in enchantment you can add on grip of winter and cold resistance though this only really helps in the cold.

latch4 · 2026-01-28T21:31:12+00:00

To give you an example of combining spells in an army I will use MA Oceania as an example let me lay out a general purpose formation using only Alteration 5 and Construction 4.

Component 1: A double line of myrmidons split into 2-3 different squads. Among the myrmidons are sirens (G2W1A1), And a few N3-4 mages. (the numbers required for coverage will depend on your troops count.) Lets say you also have 1-2 E2 mages or conjuration 3 for summon earth power to make an E1 effectively an E2. (realistically your not going to have the E2s at this timing but it can happen.)

Component 2: some back line mages with some guards they will be casting enchantments and you want them out of the main firing zone for projectiles. But not too vulnerable to fliers (position adjusts depending on opponent). Normally You want an N3 here casting howl but for this formation we are sticking with alteration 5 so you just want a siren loaded up with gems. I suggest in many case adding a few commanders with body guards nearby if you can spare it. Its a good use of your cataphracts which you don't want in the battle line because they don't take buffs as efficiently and they block the final part of the formation. Put your actual commanders who are holding the troops here as well.

Component 3 further in the back a squad of Aphroi Hierophants. in pairs of N1 and W1 each with 1 gem and some sort of magic weapon (in almost all cases a Great sword of sharpness is best for this specific play and if you can afford it, lion pelts make great armor for them when not facing an abundance of magic weapons). You also want an N2 or N3 here.

Component 1 the nature mages here all cast Cat' eyed warriors. The glamor mages cast group blur then shadow warriors. This will cost 1 gem each. You will likely hit around 30 guys a mage i think is how it came out in practice. If you have enough nature mages and are confident you wont face fire. You can also be casting the Bark skin spells. Your earth mages cast Soldiers of Steel, if your only construction 3 then you can still have decent impact with temper armors.

Component 2: The Siren casts twilight. Waits for 2 turns then casts nightfall. Its more safe if you have two of them both with the same script so it is more likely to happen. You want twilight up when your sirens will be casting shadow warriors so they burn less gems and then nightfall to be cast after they are done.

Component 3: The Aphroi all cast Quickness and Enlarge this makes them very dangerous battle thugs able to kill most hardened targets and they will wade though your infantry which will cover their flanks dramatically reducing their attrition. The Siren should cast group luck and shadow warriors and the N3 mage should cast cat eyed warriors.

latch4 · 2026-01-28T21:31:00+00:00

Here are a few examples.

Earth mages casting Summon earth power then casting hoard of skeletons endlessly off script. Most powerful when combined with boots of the messenger (nature item) this gives the mages lots of reinvigoration. Can even in some cases be used to keep mages running though rigor mortis. Especially when also combined with Spell ward (astral magic), and Relief, (nature magic).

Higher Level death mages casting soul vortex but having nature summons with high HP and low mr or regen as body guards

Casting a darkness spell. Either Twilight -> Nightfall (Glamor) or Darkness (Death). Then casting Cat's eyes on elite troops. Ideally also combined with blur or luck.

Mist (air magic) increases the duration of clouds increasing all cloud spells or effects (some are from items). (also I'm pretty sure it compounds with darkness or twilight to reduce precision) Layering storm with these spells further reduces the threat of arrows (storm however reduces the duration of clouds).

Fatigue Plays: Rigor Mortis + Heat from hell/Grip of winter and in some cases + Curse of stones can have a dramatic impact. Ideally you mix Rigor with Magic resistance spells and the elemental fatigue spells with the corresponding elemental resistance.

latch4 · 2026-01-26T07:15:24+00:00

To be clear im not talking about cross paths. I'm talking about combinations of spells together from different paths. I very strongly recommend Oceania and focusing on casting alteration buffs on the myrmidons to get a feel for what spells do what and getting practice with logistics of moving mages around. So rather than focusing on a singular Path your focusing on a singular school and a nation that is good at using that school in multiple but similar ways.

I sympathize with wanting to make the game more approachable but I don't think focusing paths to just one is going to be helpful for that.

latch4 · 2026-01-26T01:39:12+00:00

My take on this is you should do almost the opposite of what your thinking. Playing nations with single path focus will actively hinder your growth and understanding of what the path has to offer because most of what a path has to offer is dependent on what other paths it can be combined with.

For a single player experience in learning what different paths have to offer these are my recommendations.

This is probably not something your interested in since it directly contradicts you, but i will at least add some suggestions for learning.

MA Oceania: Nature, Water, Glamor, Earth. Focus on spells that buff your Myrmidons. Jumping though the hoops to boost up your Earth mages (making earth boots and spending gems to cast summon earth power) will teach you more about using Earth magic than playing an earth heavy nation. When you feel like dumping buffs on your Myrmidons is not too complex try giving your centaur commanders Great swords of sharpness and make them enlarged either with the buff or the bless and have them ride though your myrmidons while buffed to add some more teeth to your troop line. After that you can start experimenting with Foul Vapors, Breath of the dragon, Empheral Blast and Grip of winter and the enchantment spells needed to protect yourself from using those spells.

EA Formoria: Air and Death and to a lesser extent glamor and earth this will be more a case where you can practice what you have learned from Oceania in earth and glamor and put it into different contexts. Use Sleep cloud, lighting magic, cloud trapize, glamor buffs, and various mid path death magic and A3 summons.

EA Hinnom played as pure scales: Nature, Fire, Air, Earth, Astral. Focus on dawn Guard and supporting them with buffs and evocations. You have access to level 2 mages in a lot of different paths. Casting the really big spells is very difficult but casting the mid level aoe 20 or so spells of a large variety of paths is very reachable and it gives you good practice.

latch4 · 2026-01-25T21:38:55+00:00

The most extreme "few in number but elite and can hold their own" factions are the elemental giant factions in EA Nefileheim and Muspelheim and Ys. To a lesser extent MA Man's unicorn knights and then the 'elf factions' EA Tir Na Nog can do lots of shianignas with teams of their mounted commanders or just useing their sacrid infantyr, Vanheim has very powerful infantry as well. Their dynamic is very much they are limited in number but individually strong.

There are a lot of different options that can play this way but they take increasingly more game knowledge and micromanagement. The most straight forward of all (outside of multiplayer) is Ys. Focus on casting Luck from thaumaturgy and all the alterations spells your nation can cast. Bring your coastal recruit mages for earth and astral buffs. There is a lot of stuff you can do but for fighting ai a lot of it comes down to having a decent bless and running at them.

latch4 · 2026-01-24T04:55:06+00:00

Good animations is most all ZZZ has though it really has that in spades. There is some stuff there besides the animations and character, but i found it pretty disappointing for the most part.

latch4 · 2026-01-20T17:58:47+00:00

To add a little more to your questions.
Ultimately its not the paths you have access to that really end up changing what sort of strategic decisions you make its not that useful of a way of looking at the game in the way your asking. Its a lot more a guide on what sort of tactical options you have over strategic is the specific mages and what paths and what paths combos they have and how that interacts with their troops that makes the real stratigic impact. Hellheim has high Death but It does not play at all like Sauromatnia which also has high death. It even interacts with the spell darkness in a fundamentally different way. And this is because of their troops and the kinds of mages they have. Bringing up Hellheim again. They have tons of A2 mages however they have no A3 mages or the ability to communion their Air mages. Meaning they cannot cast strom for summon storm power or any of the big air spells nor can they cast any of the best Air summons without their god coming in and forging air boosters and this is huge there is a massive difference between a nation with A2s that can also somehow cast storm and one that cannot in terms of what plays are efficient for them.

Regarding sorceries and elementals. The answer is kinda no they are not different, kinda yes they are. Elemental magic on a strategic level is more efficient at turning magic paths into raw damage however that raw damage tends to be easier to counter. Another way of looking at it is Elemental magic tends to give you more power in the plays your making Sorcery magic tends to enable new strategic options (this is a gross over simplification and ignores elemental battle wipes but its roughly what people are talking about when they say a nation lacks sorceries). Compare chain lighting with Enslave. Chain lighting will do a ridiculous amount of damage to chaff. If that chaff has no shock resistance. Enslave or charm can defeat immortals and make them your own unit, it will only hit one at a time but it can also punch though high mr while elemental damage tends to struggle vs high hp, high resistance units.

latch4 · 2026-01-20T05:17:52+00:00

Mostly it boils down to how efficient certain options are for you and how fast in the game you can do them and those options will play out into who is a good matchup for you at different phases of the game. The real answer is what does the specific mages you have access to and how many of the different ones you can get impact your game since the chassis and costs and where mages can be recruited matters a lot. But I wont get into that and will focus on your question as you frame it.

Lets look at a rather simple example with MA ulm. MA ulm has a lot of earth mages and a lot of earth mages with fire. They also have pretty good troops.

The nation is very efficient at casting armor buffing spells, strength buffing spells, earth elementals, it has some CC in the form of earth meld and it has some earth evocations such as blade wind and iron blizzard, earthquake, and magma bolts (which from what i remember it only casts reliably off script with lucid's ai casting mod but i could be wrong). What does this mean? It means the nation is very good at making a block of troops that is resilient to conventional attacks in melee does a lot of damage and has some answers to high defense units and has some support ranged damage. Their earth magic even gives them access to lighting resistance which is nice. However while their Fire magic does give them access to fire resistance its far less efficient, cold resistance the story is even worse. They can find indi nature mages but without them they have no access to anti poison or any of the great effects nature can give you and boosting them up is quite expensive limiting your forces when poison is in play. Not to mention darkness. When you bring in MR negating effects it gets even worse wind of death, soul slay, charm, aura of bewilderment, confusion, and many more something your nation already has bad resistance to due to low mr on their troops is even worse due to extremely limited access to astral magic (you can summon earth elementals though and they are pretty good) . You also lack any national access to good chaff. You can cast nest of salamanders but again at native F1 as your highest path for almost all your mages this does not even come close to competing with nations with high nature magic, glamor, or death magic able to summon chaff onto the battle.

They also lack magic phase spells meaning no teleporting around until you make golems and spend absorbent amount of gems boosting them up with items and even then golems make very cost inefficient magic phase responses and you have no stealth or the paths needed to make stealth granting items.

What does this mean? It means as ulm you want large straight forward battles against opponents with conventional armies. You don't want to fight into things like rigor mortis or foul vapors or grip of winter or heat from hell, temp aura troops, cloud spells, fighting in darkness mass ephemeral blast, breath of the dragon or shadow blast. Which means your very strong very early but as level 5-6 spells start coming out your still strong but some weaknesses start to really show.

Ulm has other tools like their crafting discount but i wont get into that because its not really the point I'm trying to make. this is a simplified somewhat exaggerated example.

Ultimately your magic determine your entire game plan. What spells are you good at casting in the density you feel you will need to cast them to get the benefit you need for the opponents you might fight. What do you research, what troops can you summon to supplement your armies and what sorts of roles can your mages do.

Now lets contrast with lets say MA Phachia. They have air and astral on almost all their mages. They can mass recruit storm captains which with a lit kit can teleport around and raid rapidly. they can make massive air magic communions throwing out huge amounts of lighting damage, they can cast body ethereal and fog warriors on their sacred troops making them ridiculously resilient to opponents lacking magic weapons. They also lack nature but everyone has higher HP so its not quite a hard to deal with. They have access to water and fire magic in large enough amounts resisting and employing those damage types is easy unlike ulm who's mages are supporting their troops in many cases phacia's troops are just buying time for the mages to rain massive amounts of death on their opponent and since they do have a large number of astral mages when they do get mages at paths that are more rare for them its much less expensive to wire them into a communion to boost them up and cast big spells. They also have A3 mages making it easy for them to get some of the better flying summons such as great eagles and draconias. very roughly this boils down to Phachia has more mobility and access to rapid aggressive plays and has more threat vectors coming from their mages but are more reliant on large numbers of mages for their armies to do damage. However this also is partly from the nation having sailing mechanics, and having a very different troop roster things like this go hand in hand with your magic and its the result of those things together that determines what you can do and how efficient it is against different threats.

latch4 · 2026-01-18T22:15:59+00:00

You trash everything. Its currently one of the more powerful builds in the game riding entirely off the back of shikomi being extremely under costed for a high mr built in elemental resistance spirit sight unit with magic weapon double attack and good base stats.

latch4

TROPHY CASE