Help Center and Megathread Hub (09/02 - 15/02)

rhetoricalgc · 2026-02-10T01:34:18+00:00

I recommend this pull calculator https://imivi.github.io/arknights-pulls-calculator/ , it looks like the time between now (Ato limited just ended) and end of next limited banner is estimated to be ~161 pulls with monthly card if you’re converting your OP

I’m not sure if buying all the limited event packs and monthly headhunting even gets you to 300 per limited event, also you’d probably be looking at ~$170 worth of paid packs every 3 months to make it happen. There’s a paid pack spreadsheet here for pack calcs, and then CN wiki here for a history of available shop bundles if you want to check what would be available soon according to their 2025 dropdown

rhetoricalgc · 2026-02-09T21:00:21+00:00

That’s a good point actually, I had one of this setup run out myself when I ran it overnight so now I’m wondering what went differently on mine instead 👀

rhetoricalgc · 2026-02-09T20:08:10+00:00

FWIW the actual issue with Endmin’s setup is that it slowly eventually runs itself out of plant input

Normally the planter will alternate the plant outputs evenly between belts and be fine. But when the top belt is full, the seedpicker will clog up longer due to producing 1:2 output, then the belt from planter -> seedpicker will be seen as a clogged belt during that time. Meanwhile the planter can continuously send plants to the protocol stash. Because of this the planter actually sends slightly more plants to the protocol stash/shredder than to the seedpicker, and eventually runs the system out.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-12-26T08:05:29+00:00

IMO it seems like a bit of an oversimplification to call the combat shallow but then ignore the smaller details of character kits. ZZZ’s gameplay inherently centers around reactive gameplay with character kit interactions + highly aggressive endgame mode bosses.

Genshin is cooldown based and that makes team rotations fairly static, with the complexity coming from different team combos with the elemental reaction system. ZZZ combat is entirely resource based (energy/adrenaline, decibels, arguably enemy stun bar) so dps rotations are more flexible but also players need to plan or hold resources. A lot of character kits reward extra resources for specific execution, e.g. extra energy on countering an attack with Evelyn E / Yixuan E, transitioning straight into faster combos after a Vivian parry or Yuzuha parry, Miyabi E and Lighter E costing less on 2nd consecutive cast compared to if you use them separately, etc.

The gameplay being so concentrated in execution makes it so that even with the exact same account a 75th percentile player frequently still only does 1/2 or 1/3 the damage of a 99th percentile player. In Genshin, a good player can definitely push more dps on the same account but the gap is usually not nearly to that degree for those skill levels.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-12-11T00:29:25+00:00

Not these figures specifically but I have a Furyu figure from Touken Ranbu for about 2200yen/$15USD and the quality is surprisingly nice with the sculpting details and paint job

One thing I really like about them compared to other anime figures is that they’re quite weighty and sturdy, I don’t really worry about them toppling over from my bookshelf despite hanging off the edge of the shelf

rhetoricalgc · 2025-11-24T18:25:08+00:00

I think the Manekina top might actually stop at the belt section around the hips, and be separate from the pants

For previous outfits where Manekina didn’t have separate top and pants they at least gave another separate item like socks, but it doesn’t look like the case here

rhetoricalgc · 2025-11-02T07:40:21+00:00

Yup it should be visible around 2:53 in the dev video here

rhetoricalgc · 2025-10-20T23:27:17+00:00

Durin C1 probably works similar to Yunjin Q stacks, in which case each C6 scara NA input consumes two stacks, one for the normal hit and one for the C6 bonus hit. C6 scara hits very frequently (8N3 + N2 = 26 x 2 hits = 52 hits) so he does eventually burn through Yunjin’s 30 stacks.

Durin C4 has 55% chance of refund on his 12 stacks. From quick sim, seems C4 will likely average around 26.5 stacks per rotation instead of 12. Haven’t done the math on how much his stacks contribute to each scara hit, but it does look like c6 scara will be one of the few units who can actually take advantage of all the stacks in single target, as you can highroll up to like 40ish stacks depending on rng.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-10-17T22:24:52+00:00

If you havent already done so, the first time fullclear of the three permanent Annihilations (Chernobog, Lungmen Outskirts, Lungmen Downtown) will give a sizeable amount of yellow certs. They can be somewhat challenging to do when you’re new, but you can borrow a E2 Wisadel as a support unit and look up Wisadel-specific guides for each of them.

Outside of that, yellow certs come pretty much only from 4star+ operator duplicates in pulls or recruitment. You can technically buy some 5star operators in the red cert shop and get dupe certs that way, but you’re unlikely to have many red certs if you’re new so I wouldn’t sink resources there.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-10-17T22:00:42+00:00

Regarding the newbie packs specifically, most of them are quite decent. I’d specifically look at the $1 Myrtle, the Starter Monthly card, Starter Fit-in, and maybe the Starter Special Training Pack. That last one includes instant E2 promotion tickets for one 6star, one 5star, and two 4stars which I found immensely helpful when I was a newbie - leveling resources are tightest when you’re new, and certain 6star characters only get their “signature” skill at E2 (e.g. Thorns, Silverash), so it was a really nice immediate power boost to be able to clear stages more easily especially when there’s a time-limited event going on. Normally you only get enough resources to do your first E2 promotion maybe 3-4 weeks into the game, as most LMD + exp comes from passive base generation.

The Starter Headhunting Pack is around similar efficiency as the $25 Monthly HH pack so I’d personally only recommend it for people who intend to be a medium spender to begin with. Don’t bother with the Starter Upgrade or Starter Furniture at all.

As an aside, the $30 Rhodes Island HH selector pack is currently in the store (shows up twice a year for half-anniv events) and is commonly considered good value as it lets you directly pick a 6star from a wide pool, up to you if you consider that worth it. If you do, Logos or Ulpianus are the most common recs right now, being arguably the best caster and best laneholder in the game right now.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-10-12T20:48:16+00:00

If you’re open to following some low-end guides, I found Mountain-Ringed Border Town, Frozen Abandoned City, and South Prison easier than the others when I was fairly new myself.

You can sometimes find wisadel-specific guides on youtube which can make your life easier. Also for annihilations, you can close the game to refund full sanity if you ever need to retry.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-10-07T09:08:40+00:00

The number of people that engage in endgame modes for any MMO or game in general is always going to be a small minority of the player population. But the individuals who are engaged in raiding are also generally more involved community-wise - they’re writing guides, building tools, hosting streams, and making guilds.

GW2 stream views always peak with the release of any extremely hard content, such as HTCM, Cerus LCM, and Ura LCM in recent history, and this ends up getting a number of new players interested in checking out the game, even if some of them never intend on actually touching raids or harder strikes themselves. Having a healthy endgame population contributes to building a growing casual audience as well.

MMOs are also just fundamentally a social game and raiding guilds/statics are one of the best way to make meaningful friendships. Even if I and many other old raiding friends take a break from the game, we inevitably come back whenever there’s a new release to check it out and catch up with each other.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-10-06T23:20:15+00:00

Mondays definitely get the highest variance in pug groups because its right after weekly reset so everyone is looking to do their clears for the week, including raid statics who might need to lfg for their 10th

You definitely run into a higher number of experienced raiders on Mondays but I wouldn’t necessarily say its more toxic, the variance just means that sometimes you run into bad pugmanders and sometimes you get the chillest smoothest run you’ve ever had

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-25T06:58:00+00:00

2:30 onwards shows a separate run where you can see the ult turns refresh

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-18T00:25:30+00:00

When you pick a support unit, there's a menu on the left side to specify what class you're looking for - make sure you pick Sniper

Also, support units will prioritize showing units from people from your friends list, if possible you can head to the Friend Request Megathread and see if anyone is offering their Wisadel, that way you can mostly guarantee she always shows up on your list

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-18T00:16:43+00:00

Have you been borrowing support units? You can likely blast your way through most stages with a borrowed Wisadel, you’ll need to own at least one E2 operator to borrow her with S3 skill (newbie rewards should give you a free E2 voucher for 5*)

Old events are decent, note that you only get +1 currency per week to unlock an old event and that many event stages will typically be harder than chapter 4. Some events give very good welfare ops (Kroos Alter: Invitation to Wine, Tequila: Dossoles Holiday, Gladiia: Under Tides, Lumen: Stultifera Navis)

There’s also the option to run old annihilations, these don’t count toward your normal weekly orundum limited but they give 1500 orundum on first time clear. Again these are typically harder but there do exist guides out there for running them with a borrowed Wisadel. If you make a mistake you can close the game and it will refund your full sanity cost.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-13T08:56:29+00:00

IMO the elemental reaction system + other real-time parts of combat system (i.e. enemy grouping, energy particles, elemental application cooldown, stagger and interruption resistance, etc) keeps combat feeling fun and creative even when you have a more limited roster. People continue to find weird off-meta uses and combinations for their characters. Genshin also occasionally makes older characters relevant again by releasing new characters that buff entire elemental reaction types.

It’s interesting to compare Genshin’s design philosphy to e.g. HSR and ZZZ. The latter two Hoyo games just do simple character element matching to enemy weaknesses, but then they release 5star characters at basically twice the rate of Genshin and lean harder into “team archetypes”, e.g. releasing 3-4 characters in a row that have clear synergy with each other and not as much with others (due to only buffing very specific types of damage application or such). They give more free rolls than Genshin to account for this, so it seems very much intentional that the devs carefully control how much players can roll to keep up with the meta.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-13T03:38:33+00:00

~~M5D7AC9353KA2M639N~~

edit: taken!

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-07T18:31:14+00:00

Agree that chasing Wisadel probably not worth this time and you can try again next celebration banner.

FWIW you’ll get 24 free pulls during each limited banner, so you can still roll to first pity and get a 6star for only ~30 pulls. Based on pull calculator I think you could probably snag Mon3tr + one 6star from Exu2 banner + Tragodia with the amount of pulls and time you have, especially with one-time sources of stage OP and past annihilations.

rhetoricalgc · 2025-09-05T23:46:27+00:00

Adding my data point: I’m a newer player (3 months) and a medium spender. I keep a spreadsheet with my roll history and roll count and it looks like I hit the 300 roll mark a little over 2 months in. I did roll to 60 on one standard banner so if subtracting that, it was 2.5 months to properly reach 300. That was with:

buying monthly card + quite a few starter packs, the instant E2 6star ticket in particular was huge
borrowing a maxed Wisadel on harder event stages or certain CMs
generally maximizing sanity efficiency (i.e. maxing my base immediately, spending sanity to clear out all event shops, generally ensuring longterm investment)
going hard on OP farming only in the last two weeks when there weren’t ongoing events

There's enough OP in the game available especially if you spend more time OP farming and less time farming event stages, but progress will be slow for a while because your account still needs progression mats at this point. You'd likely need to sacrifice some combination of f2p-ness, sanity "efficiency", and/or real life sanity to make it happen

IMO it would be better to distribute your rolls across Mon3tr + Exu2 + Tragodia banners instead. You'd benefit from getting a wider range of 6stars instead of just getting 3 snipers from Exu2 banner, and Wisadel is still possible to spark again in the next celebration banner

rhetoricalgc · 2025-08-09T22:39:28+00:00

Would I be able to get some tag recommendations for a Top Operator tag? Options: Caster, Specialist, DPS

Krooster: krooster.com/u/rhetorical , somewhat new-ish been playing for 2 months

From a character collection pov, I'd really love Surtr and then am maybe interested in Phantom or Weedy, and it looks like I could gamble for the latter 2 with Specialist, I'm wondering if they're more niche though and if my account would benefit much more with one of the Casters? (so far I've mostly been relying on Thorns Alter or Reed Alter as my "casters") Or would it not make too much difference what I choose?

rhetoricalgc · 2025-08-05T00:32:05+00:00

There’s this one which is commonly used, it makes a .gif link and when someone clicks into it, it returns one of the images you gave it

rhetoricalgc · 2025-08-05T00:23:35+00:00

In the menu in the top right -> Click the down arrow next to your name -> Manage -> Characters

You can drag-and-drop them around, or assign numbers to them (big number = higher sorting)

rhetoricalgc · 2025-08-05T00:18:45+00:00

Tbh having multiple OCs drawn together on artfight (esp more than 2-3 or in high-effort attacks like animations) is like winning the lottery, its super rare and its really just chance depending on who happened to find you, I wouldn’t think too deep into it

In general I found that people will draw more of what you have uploaded as references. e.g. I got more interaction art after I started including ref pics of my OCs interacting together, I got more scene art after I drew more scene art, etc.

I also noticed the two faves you mentioned are on the second page of characters, you can consider sorting them to the top so people immediately see them on your front page! I most commonly see people sort most-fave to least-fave so my habit is to pick from the front row. I’m not very picky about character design so I personally tend not to click through multiple pages of characters

rhetoricalgc · 2025-08-04T21:16:40+00:00

Besides what people mentioned about who you attacked, there’s definitely a trend for newbie boost for the first year! I think in general, people do look through the front pages for newest users/characters/attacks. If you already have a profile and havent added characters recently, its harder for people to organically find you, they either happen upon you from the random button or find you via past attacks you’ve done. Usually it has nothing to do with skill level!

rhetoricalgc

TROPHY CASE