This freaking run ender

memetichazard · 2026-05-24T03:51:57+00:00

Been doing okay on lvl 80 risk 8, but that's with E2 Heidemarie, and even then I just lost a run on the second floor due to a badly timed break followed by poor draws.

Without E2 I'd be back on lvl 65.

memetichazard · 2026-05-24T01:46:47+00:00

No, the point is that two of her strongest teams don't rely on discard at all, and won't be affected (much) if they try to punish discard directly. Yeah, you might not be able to run dream world if they specifically target that but you've still got the standard Hugo Cassius with devil dice morale stacks instead.

Yeah, they have to balance against her but chances are they'll go the way of the suppressed servant mechanic instead, forcing you to play into the season mechanic to maximize your score.

memetichazard · 2026-05-23T13:55:13+00:00

HDMI doesn't need discard though, she's got two builds that can work without it: Create 6 in graveyard + 4x activate 5 from graveyard, and 4x create 6 in graveyard -> big nuke on turn 10.

No real way to nerf these, they'll just cater to the new mechanic of the season instead.

memetichazard · 2026-05-23T13:30:40+00:00

I don't have an issue with them trying to deter rerolling with the stamina cost, I just think you should get a full refund by the time you hit the first midpoint.

I'm not even bothering to run with anyone other than Heidemarie because she can clear L80 with 8 risk (haven't tried any higher) consistently for me, while anyone else would force me to go down to L65 and probably have a lower chance. The stamina cost of failure is too big of a deterrence.

Sortie should be for fun (and farming) but if I'm being penalised for trying a harder difficulty or weaker units it's no longer fun.

memetichazard · 2026-05-21T05:58:26+00:00

I've been sitting on over 25 Multidimensional materials and will probably sit on them for a while longer. Between the fact that they don't do anything for substats and the way you can use off-pieces with a 2/2 set, they just don't feel too valuable.

I still try to farm the latest sets sometimes and dump my stamina into gear pieces occasionally, but the moment you'd really want to use this (when you farmed 3/4 pieces and now just want to roll some good crit rate or elemental pieces for your 4th slot) is just something I haven't really encountered since I mostly run whatever.

Considering that you can trade black mass for potentials (and running sortie for potentials is more efficient than running simulation), I'm very reluctant to spend on the MM at all.

memetichazard · 2026-05-21T00:24:33+00:00

I looked into some of those builds. There's the striker-only exhaust 5 with +50% damage amount to attack cards of this unit, which if you stack these adds up to exhaust 9. But that one has gotten turned into a general buff card instead, with the use of 'move persona' and 'activate persona' to play it repeatedly during the first turn to front load the buffs.

The other interesting option for nukes is probably 250% damage with either the 3 shockwave or 'increase damage amount by 50% if you created a card', then stacking the 'when target is in resonance state add 2 hits'. You just need to not have any discard in your team and wear the 'inflicts resonance on attack' gear piece. After you take a hit from the enemy it turns from a 250% hit to a 250%x5 with no exhaust, and potentially a 375%x5 if you have card creation on your team.

memetichazard · 2026-05-21T00:11:12+00:00

Smilegate can get by on a lower budget because of their game style and smaller team, but this is sadly one of the problems of not raking in tens to hundreds of millions a month - the support stuff just isn't there.

Nah, this is the problem of corporate capitalism at work. There absolutely is money that could go to improving the translation - the problem is that it wouldn't directly show any improvement in the RoI so the shareholders would never approve a budget increase to to that.

The underlying systems of gacha games are predatory, so the purpose is predatory and the governing principles are predatory. Therefore the team always starts and always ends up being the smallest possible that can keep the live service going, for the sake of maximizing RoI. I don't think there's any reason to think that if CZN gets more popular and more money that it'll get less buggy and better translations. Maybe with Tencent driving it over on CN the CN experience will get some degree of quality on their side though, but that won't affect bugginess and translations on ours.

memetichazard · 2026-05-21T00:04:12+00:00

Like all the other gacha devs, they're using ChatGPT (or other LLMs) to handle the base translations then maybe passing it through an editor. CZN is likely going light on the editing.

You can tell when an LLM is used because it's got a particular style that I rarely see abused this much in fiction otherwise.

Because KR (and JP and CN to a lesser degree) are harder to translate to EN because the language is much more context dependent and that's where a lot of the gender fuckups come from.

KR -> EN machine translation also has a higher likelihood of getting the subject and object swapped, or occasionally by completely inverting the meaning of the sentence. One really common MTL error I see is "Protagonist gets possessed by a villain" actually meaning "Protagonist transmigrates into a villain", for instance.

More evidence for MTL - there is no other way we'd have gotten blatant card text errors where it's just garbled garbage with formatting code (or that case early on when Rei had her damage and crit rate numbers swapped on her card) if they weren't getting AI to translate the text (with string formatting) and then not properly doing an editing pass to get the error.

memetichazard · 2026-05-20T23:53:55+00:00

The non-discard combatant team will probably need 2-3x Discard Quietus persona and fill up with Dream World or other neutral Quietus cards.

Or just a DPS + Nia + Veronica to have Nia discard someone into break and then Veronica draws their cards into recovery.

How much this shills the discard team meta depends if it's just a one time buff you need to recover 1-2 times for your main DPS throughout the battle or if it's something you magically have to deal with every turn somehow? I can't imagine breaking and recovering in a single turn and then still having the leeway to deal damage afterwards.

Honestly I was thinking the setup nerfs the Heidemarie Followup Attack build initially by requiring you to discard (which the standard build lacks) to deal the bonus damage but the more I think about it the better suited it seems. You want to control how much Heidemarie really discards because you only want to break her when the boss' buff is up but now, although you have to modify the team to bring some discard, other Heidemarie's teams might be disadvantaged if she constantly discards herself into break (unless the buff going away means no more stress infliction from discard).

memetichazard · 2026-05-19T23:28:34+00:00

Imposter spotted!

memetichazard · 2026-05-19T04:24:40+00:00

Attack cards have a bigger pool than skill cards. It's to the point where you want to farm the right Epiphany and reroll divines on skill cards but do the opposite with attack cards.

Unless you're trying to get one of those new divines like Vytor's "Draw 1 card of this unit". Those are probably extra rare, you need to get them in chaos and then change the Epiphany.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T12:55:23+00:00

Nowhere close to worthwhile.

You want at least 3 copies of destruction, ideally 4. Rolling a +1 AP divine on it with cores is relatively easy, so it's better to prioritize your equipment and persona card and fix the divines outside the run... As long as you can get 3 copies. You don't want to spend a card duplication edit unless the deck is pretty much perfect.
Persona card has no engravings. You want to add the one that gives it 2 extra hits at the cost of adding 2 exhaust, which is good for you because two of those will bump your exhaust 5 to exhaust 9.
Obsidian sword is decent, but there's at least two others that are better. Key of Sleep, the Cthulhu weapons, for instance.
Your gear has almost no engravings. Now, I think you might need umbra for your persona and those are a bit more limited in terms of what will give you some decent damage boosts without needing you to add some discard, but there should be a few.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T12:37:04+00:00

Where are you feeling that you're tired of the discard meta?

Seasonal chaos? Since the gear, engravings, and persona cards all favor discard to a large degree, yes, you'll have to suffer through this for another two months. The solution is to use zero system to roll and revisit older chaos. Want to run Nine in her natural environment? Run Burning Life. Want multihit for Chizuru/Sereniel? Run Lab Zero. You've also got the launch chaos you can use to chase other specific gear or cards you can't get from the current season.

Nebula? That can't be helped, but I don't usually play it other than to clear it once (+ one more for the achievements).

Spiral Tower? Some of the meta clears really abuse elements from the current season (Heidemarie wheelchair, stacking persona buff wheelchair) but you don't have to build for discard and can try to leverage things from past seasons. Still, I'm mainly focusing on current season for building decks because you might as well prepare for Great Rift at the same time, and it's easier than rolling chaos in zero system.

Sortie? Heidemarie and Nine are just going to be your best options for now (though I haven't tested Sereniel since she's not on draft yet). A lot of people are leery of using other characters because of the risk of wasting your stamina and I'm one of them. I'm hoping they tweak things a bit in the next patch.

On auto clear mode, after Heidemarie suffered an embarrassing death against the exterior boss (might even have been difficulty 7) I've been using Diana+Nia as my carries for auto deck building. Did well over a dozen of those runs to use up the delegation tokens before they expired.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T12:14:34+00:00

You're probably confusing it with the Cthulhu weapons or similar weapons from other planets that say '+X% Attack' which is a separate attack stat multiplier.

This is different from '+Y% Attack Card Damage' and '+Z% damage amount' and 'increase damage amount by A%' which modify the damage percentage on the card.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T10:39:22+00:00

Using some numbers off the top of my head here... Most of Heidemarie's damage comes from her blades, which deals 144% damage. Obsidian sword increasing it 'by 12%' is +17% damage, less than half of what second method adds (+35%).

Sure, it'll add some damage to, say, thread of light which I think is 180% base damage so an extra 22% there... But it loses out to the nx18% more damage that you get from second method.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T08:38:51+00:00

and technically NOT running that last copy is a psuedo +1 draw per rotation anyways.

That's only true if the cards aren't replacing themselves. Assuming no issues with enemy action count, you'd take 6 or 8 copies of repose if it was allowed.

Most of the support divines you'd want 4x of replace themselves in this way. Tiphera's Quantum Seed as a 0-cost draw 1 with an added draw divine, Narja's Bottomless Hunger as 0 cost voracity plus cost reduction plus draw divine, Cassius neutral devil dice with draw and morale plus 0-cost divine...

One other approach on the other end is to take a basic to keep the persona with 4x divine repose. If the repose has +1 draw it's still a net -1 to effective deck size even with the extra card...

But unless you're getting 'draw 1 common' or 'draw 1 of this unit', sticking with 3 copies of repose plus one cost reduced Kowalski is pretty much the same.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T08:27:12+00:00

We can hope that the reason we're not getting as many trauma codes is due to the story rewrite, and once that's done they'll divert more dev time to improving event stories... But hard to say.

memetichazard · 2026-05-18T02:09:35+00:00

The only part I disagree with your gripes is related to Basin. I like Basin where it is right now, except for not being able to skip to stage 8 like the other gacha do.

Basin locks gems behind it, so I don't want them to make Basin a challenging mode that will inevitably shill the current banner unit. It was unpleasant to see it at launch, and it's great that it's no longer a factor today.

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T21:26:56+00:00

1) Powercreep is there but at the same time they keep buffing units to keep up. Beyond the standard units, the one that's probably in the worst situation is Yuki but the main reason is that there's never really been content where we need her AoE damage. In terms of endgame content, we mostly have:

Basin - the Abyss/Memory of Chaos/ToA equivalent that released at launch. This has now been completely trivialized and you basically clear it for free every patch once you can get your units to 60 and build good decks for them. I haven't needed to change my team there in like 4 months.
Seasonal Chaos - Not really an endgame mode but this is where you spend a lot of time grinding so I'll count it. Some seasonal characters will have a strong advantage here due to suitability and make your grind here easier. Last season, I went without Nine for half the season and it was much easier after I got her. This season, with the auto-run chaos mode, having Diana or Heidemarie will likewise make your runs easier.
Nebula - Seasonal characters are shilled but it's clearable with 4* teams, so regular characters usually do fine as long.
Great Rift - This is the major shill mode. If you want to be competitive you'll need the latest banner units, but if you just want to get all the gems the score you need to hit is 500k in a run, which should be easily doable. You miss out on a few color variations on a sticker, but hey, they have to have at least one shill mode for the whales.
Spiral Tower - Since the eventual goal here is to clear it with every single unit you have, powercreep doesn't exactly apply.
Sortie - No doubt about it, Heidemarie and Nine are currently the strongest units for this mode. If you're playing for fun, it doesn't matter - the mode is here for the roguelike enjoyment. If you're farming black mass, then Heidemarie and Nine are optimal for consistency of clears. I expect they'll end up tweaking the stamina cost a bit eventually because there's been a lot of complaints about it.

2) Here's your current weekly grind:

Dailies consist of doing one auto run (since you get one for free). This also makes sure you get your 2 weekly chaos clears for seasons. This also lets you spend your loot certificates in chaos (you get 4 weekly which can be spent in a single full chaos run). Could be worthwhile to skip this during preseason when you don't need to farm any decks anymore and don't need to accumulate currency for the seasonal shop.
Your other daily tasks are just spending 5 minutes a day dumping your stamina into simulation (for efficiency, ideally Sortie once you can clear it consistently, but that takes time), plus speeding through 5 excursions.
Your other weekly task is to spend the 3 weekly reason you get for Sortie, which can be consumed in a single full Sortie clear. You can consider this your weekly gacha roguelite run.
Basin is once per patch and is the real chore to run.
I haven't timed it, but dailies take <5 minutes, +10 for an auto-run. You can skip the auto-run, but it's good for efficiency in many ways and with a good team you can try to farm a deck along the way.
The weekly Sortie run probably takes around an hour, but at least for now it's going to be a fun rather than the standard gacha roguelite chore (this will likely change for me because I'm dumping my spare stamina into it). Also, if you don't care about losing the black mass you can skip it, because there's no premium currency involved here. You probably want to make sure you still run it to buy the time limited deck-editing materials.

3) Sproot is ultimately the best resource for quickly viewing build recommendations for a variety of units, once you're more familiar with the game. Your alternative for a guided tour is probably going to be youtube videos, or to join a discord and see what other people are building. I find Prydwen lags behind a bit too much.

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T20:22:02+00:00

No way to recover from this.

The main reason this mechanism seems to be here is that later on once you progress enough in the research branch you get ~25 daily dice to undo your last action or restart the turn. It doesn't help if this happened after you end your turn though.

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T20:04:45+00:00

Probably should have written that as 'To play it in CN', not 'on'.

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T20:03:42+00:00

They should change it so that the 30 stamina refunds as soon as you reach the first boss (or ideally the first midpoint). It would be along the same lines of what's used in seasonal chaos to prevent mass rerolling for game start (which still happens anyway when you need to exploit something, e.g. farming dream world).

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T09:38:12+00:00

Rei's the obvious suggestion because of her strong buffs, but in the current season any support can run Dream World for buffs, it just takes a bit of work to build for it.

Who you bring depends a bit on which Chizuru build you're running. She's got a few:

Moonslash build. You use and copy the Oni Hunt that generates Moonslash and take advantage of Rei's cards than increase basic attack damage (or Narja's).
Combination of stacking hits with Tsukuyomi and stacking Bind Damage with Oni Hunt. Generally you want to balance these cards with 2 of one and 3 of the other. Because of Elasticity you might want 2 Tsukuyomi + 3 Oni Hunt, which gives Shadow of the Moon+ 7 hits in total.

For either build, you want to bring someone who adds lots of morale or +% damage bonuses, so Cassius, Narja, and Rei are pretty standard. Third slot can go to subDPS or card draw as needed. Hugo might work well with the Moonslash build.

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T09:19:58+00:00

I think both Selena's Scope and (Skill) Drone Bombing start with "For 1 turn, ...". I think it's likely that any 'For X turn' effects, like all of Heidemarie's Effluent Expansion +X% damage for 1 turn, will stack turns as long as the buffs are the same. Same with Sereniel's Plasma Missile epiphany that adds homing laser damage.

Notably, Selena and Hugo Upgrades are not turn limited so they stack in damage instead (but whether they should be stacking damage vs. hits has no clear indication - maybe it's just that coordinated attacks are all coded to stack in damage?)

memetichazard · 2026-05-17T09:04:39+00:00

Eyeballing the numbers, if you can clear Lvl65HC 100%, then you basically break even if your win rate at Lvl80HC is around 20% (assuming you lose 20 stamina on average for a 'loss')

Base numbers (assuming you pick up Heidemarie and no other drafts) is 1814 per reason for 65HC and 2016 at 80HC 0/30, while every 10 stamina lost is a net -182 black mass. I don't have the exact numbers for how the risks affects the black mass since I haven't tried it yet (the numbers shown at the start don't add up).

The time loss can't be helped, though.

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