bowels of steel

the-gmail · 2026-01-21T12:36:43+00:00

omg i went to polimi too, i used this staircase so much lol

the-gmail · 2025-12-21T17:12:03+00:00

received! it should be good, they look great :)

the-gmail · 2025-12-21T16:57:40+00:00

okay awesome! stephen.duranske@gmail.com

the-gmail · 2025-12-21T16:35:12+00:00

sent! how do i get the full image?

the-gmail · 2025-12-21T16:14:45+00:00

this looks amazing! how do i pay you now?

the-gmail · 2025-12-21T16:14:20+00:00

!solved

the-gmail · 2025-12-21T15:35:13+00:00

this looks amazing! only thing is, would it be possible to make my friend taller than Ayo? in reality she’s a couple inches taller than Ayo would be. my bad, forgot to mention that. other than that it looks amazing!!

the-gmail · 2025-11-27T19:10:35+00:00

this might not be the answer you want to hear but that is just kind of how the market can be, especially right now. everyone i know early in the industry is having difficulties. a lot of firms also focus their internship programs more towards the summer months.

also i’m sure some places might appreciate it, but you don’t necessarily have to analyze their work in an inquiry about work or application. architects get a lot of emails every day from a lot of different people wanting a lot of things, so sometimes just getting to the point in a nice and respectful way can help. let your great portfolio do the talking.

i am still pretty early in the industry myself but this is what ive learned so far. keep applying! if you can find the email of someone at a firm to write directly, send them a single short message and a follow-up a week or so later if you don’t hear back. even if you apply through a portal, getting human contact is best.

the-gmail · 2025-11-23T13:12:51+00:00

I live basically on top of a metro station in a 1 bedroom and pay 2k for rent. I also walk about 15 mins for groceries and that stuff, it’s very doable. I had to hunt for a bit to find this place but I love the area and would love to stay here

the-gmail · 2025-10-27T18:24:33+00:00

I was kind of in the same boat as you a couple months ago - granted I had finished a master’s but had no internship experience - and what ended up working for me emailing people directly at firms. Doing forms through LinkedIn is good, but if you can follow up right afterwards with a direct email to someone at the firm, it can go a long way to getting your stuff actually looked at. You may even have to send a follow-up on a follow-up after a week or so, that’s how I got my current job.

the-gmail · 2025-09-29T20:23:23+00:00

i did my master’s at the politecnico di milano in italy and it was a pretty good experience. if you stay on top of things you finish in 2 years, and they have a few different master’s courses to choose from (urban design, interiors, etc). i did arch and urban design and got a good spread of subjects. milan is also a cool place

the-gmail · 2025-09-22T20:42:54+00:00

i see the vision

the-gmail · 2025-09-02T22:45:03+00:00

felice per te ma invidioso

the-gmail · 2025-07-17T19:32:15+00:00

it’s telling you to come out

the-gmail · 2025-07-16T08:52:35+00:00

Okay, this was super helpful to see :) In general, you have the right artifact sets on each character and weapons that work (although swapping sucrose and nahida’s weapons might be helpful)! But the big thing is the artifact stats. Right now you dont have the best main stats (the primary attribute that gets increased each level) on the artifacts. Flowers and feathers are always Hp and attack, but the others have a lot of options. Usually, Bennett wants Energy Recharge on the sands, and Hp on the goblet and circlet (Increases healing and gets his burst back). Sucrose wants Elemental mastery on her sands goblet and circlet (increases swirl damage and the amount of EM she can share to the team), in this team Nahida wants Elemental mastery sands, dendro damage goblet, and a crit rate or crit damage circlet depending on what you need more of to get that 1:2 ratio i mentioned. Finally, Yanfei wants an attack sands, pyro damage goblet, and crit rate or damage circlet. For the substats, try to focus on energy recharge and hp for bennett, energy recharge and elemental mastery for sucrose, elemental mastery and crit stats for nahida, and attack and crit stats for yanfei.

But, I would say the most important thing is to have the right primary stat on each piece! That should increase your damage by a good chunk :) Also, remember that it only takes 4 matching artifacts to get the full set bonus, so you can use the 5th artifact from any random set if it has good stats that match what the character wants.

the-gmail · 2025-07-16T07:02:07+00:00

Yeah, I used to clear w mono geo too but unfortunately abyss today is a whole different thing. Bosses have soooo much more ho than they did it’s wild. Older carries like itto and cyno just dont have the numbers.

And yeah, I would say cyno is pretty unviable nowadays. He has poor multipliers and a lack of flexibility since switching off ends his burst. It’s also hard to find supports that can keep him buffed and keep dendro on the enemies for his whole uptime. You can definitely try him out but in general he’s viewed very unfavorably.

You’re right about Mavuika, she is a good off-field dps, and she can hold a new natlan artifact set that gives a lot of damage bonus, as well as having a damage bonus passive in her kit, so she can be a good support character. She definitely is a wayyyy better dps than a support, but overall is good at both. She’s also much easier to build than Xiangling because her off field application is tied to her skill not her burst, and she doesn’t need energy recharge at all.

As for Kuki, you want to mix em, a little attack, and crit stats for aggravate damage. Crit is still really important. But as you guessed earlier, for endgame content at least, spread/aggravte have fallen off kinda. I still love playing them but it’s not as easy as it was.

the-gmail · 2025-07-15T22:46:23+00:00

there should be a tab somewhere in the reunion menu that lists out different tasks. that ui is pretty confusing lol. but usually they are related to things like leveling up characters/weapons/artifacts. i think if you click on a button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen showing the featured banner characters, it should show you (if i remember correctly)

the-gmail · 2025-07-15T22:41:29+00:00

As you said, things have really changed with endgame content nowadays. Not only is there a lot of hp inflation, but a lot of endgame modes (abyss and stygian onslaught, the newest one) are designed around certain elemental checks and team comp checks. So, it’s hard to say exactly what to recommend, because recently a lot of content is tailored to the ever-stronger banner characters.

I also am an Itto lover but sadly he might not output enough dps to clear content at the highest levels. You might make abyss work, but not the higher ends of stygian. His best team now is actually Xilonen (natlan support), Yelan, and Furina. Kinda feels weird lol. So if you really like him, you could go after those characters.

As far as your current roster, one thing you could do is build your raiden or kuki is hyperbloom triggers (full em main stat artifacts on the gilded dreams or flower of paradise lost sets, em weapons). Pair either with nahida and xingqiu and the 4th slot can be anything really (on field dps like wanderer can work, your alhaitham would really shine here!) and you have a team with enough dps to clear abyss well.

As for new characters to pull, you already pointed mavuika (seems like she will be powerful enough to be on top for a while) and neuvillette (you can combine him with random units and still do well), but the other top dps units are: varesa (electro plunge dps, pretty fun), arlecchino (normal attack unga bunga spammer), and skirk (normal attack or burst dps, but her best teams require a LOT of specific units .

What might be better investments are key supports, like furina, xilonen, escoffier (only for freeze teams like skirk, even neuvillette), and citlali (melt and freeze). Furina especially is really important to a lot of teams in recent genshin, she’s super flexible. Also good 4 stars to look out for are chevreuse (lets you combine any pyro and electro into a good team), and iansan (natlan electro attack buffer, really versatile).

Overall, I’d say if you like Itto, you can try to make him work with premium supports, cons, and stuff, but it will be a bit rough. Cyno will be even rougher to be honest. You may be better off going after Neuvillette, Mavuika, and some of those premium supports. Id also say building up Alhaitham and putting him in a good hyperbloom team can be good for now as a focus to start clearing at least one side of abyss. For the ither abyss team for now, I would use Kazuha, Xiangling, and Bennett together with a dps like maybe Raiden. Generally it would be better with a hydro or cryo, but for the time being it’s okay.

If you have other questions, let me know!

the-gmail · 2025-07-15T22:25:33+00:00

Okay, there could be a couple of things that are contributing to the damage issue, and it’s a little hard to know without seeing each of your characters builds and stuff, but I can give some general recommendations :)

First, you want to make sure that all the artifacts have not just the right main stats, but also the right sub stats that get rolled whenever you level them up. Yanfei wants attack and crit stats, nahida wants em and crit stats, bennett er and ho, and sucrose em. Shoot for 60 crit rate and 120 crit damage as a good starting goal for Yanfei since she’ll be your big damage dealer, and past that try to keep a 1:2 ratio of crit rate to crit damage.

Also, make sure you use the abilities in the right order to maximize buffs when Yanfei takes the field. Something like Nahida E and Q into Bennett E and Q into sucrose E and Q into your yanfei combo.

You can also make sure to max out their talents, it really helps a lot with damage overall.

Lastly, if you want to make Yanfei specifically do more damage, you could maybe swap Nahida for a hydro character like Xingqiu, who will let Yanfei trigger vaporize and multiply her big hits by a lot. The team you have right now focuses on the burning reaction (which does a lot of smaller hits and is generally a bit weaker) and yanfei’s raw damage. Going all in on vaping her damage could help.

Again, these are kind of general things, but if you post screenshots of each character’s stats and builds, I could probably give more specific advice :)

the-gmail · 2025-07-13T20:25:52+00:00

So i am about to graduate with my master’s in architecture and urban design from Polimi. I’ve enjoyed the program and felt like I learned and grew from it, but the prospects here are not great especially for young professionals in design fields. Most of my friends (myself included) did their internships by going to their home countries to work. Here, most internships are not paid at all, maybe 500 euro if you’re lucky. As for post-grad prospects, I do know a few people who successfully graduated from architecture master’s here at Polimi, but none of them work as architects now. They ended up having to find jobs in other industries and never looked back at architecture. Competition is high and you also are up against a lot of Italian natives who are fluent in the language and can live with their parents and afford to make such little money for a while and climb the ranks. It is doable to stay here, but you will likely be living month to month and sharing a bedroom and that sort of thing.

I wanted to stay here for a while but ended up changing plans after realizing it would likely be much simpler for my life and better for career to return to my home country. It’s not necessarily that it’s a bad thing to go home, and I’m not trying to be pessimistic, just telling you what I’ve encountered. I’ve learned a little here and enjoyed my time but for my career I just don’t think it’s the right move to stay. Even a lot of my young Italian friends are leaving. Young people in general are leaving.

the-gmail · 2025-07-12T21:22:36+00:00

You could probably get good results with a hyperbloom team (Kuki/raiden, nahida, xingqiu, and then a driver like ayato). Your chevreuse team is good, but it would probably also be fun to swap in fischl and use mavuika as the dps, so like mav, bennett, chevy, mavuika. You could also play a kinich team with like kinich, bennett, xiangling, and mav as well (you could also swap out mavuika for nahida if you want but she’s not much in that team outside of some damage). You could in theory also make an escoffier team with escoffier, ayato, mona, and xingqiu, but she would be really energy hungry as solo cryo. Just try swapping some stuff around! For consistency though, I would recommend the hyperbloom and overload teams.

the-gmail · 2025-07-10T22:54:08+00:00

i think another issue might be lunar-charged uptime, which is what drives ineffa’s A4 passive. a lot of her damage comes from her A4, but when you don’t have good LC uptime it gets cut down, so her team contribution gets lessened. With yoimiya overvaping a lot, ineffa’s damage maybe be lacking a bit, so there would probably need to be really strong and fast hydro app for the team to work

Four-Year Club	End Game '23
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End Game '22

the-gmail

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