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#but that could ALSO just be. the way the story set up for euden and alberius to be very similar characters (WHICH WAS FUCKED UP)
mxdotpng · 3 years
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i hate dragalia lost
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zephyr-paladyn · 2 years
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masculaxi character analysis/appreciation
it's been over a year since gala masculaxi's release and i'm still not over it
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(heavy dragalia lost spoilers ahead)
(gala mascula does not exist btw) i just love how mascula and laxi are designed as two parts of a whole, basically one half of the same ideal/same person. you can't have one without the other. if you heavily favor one over the other i dont trust you... only half joking. when laxi went berserk and mascula had to save her by giving her his heart in their debut ch11, that was just... such a moment... it shows them at their most "separate" (laxi in berserk/annihilation mode, and mascula stopping at nothing to disengage combat.) which sets us up for their development as two hearts in one body. in masculaxi (flame blade)'s story, they're still at odds but they begin to learn to cooperate in the same body, and this is the beginning of their "convergence." in ch14 of the main story is when we see the beginnings of eden mode. when all the androids sacrifice themselves for euden and co to advance, mascula realizes it his empathetic heart that influenced them and led them to their painful deaths. he then shuts down his ego circuit out of guilt. when the team is in a tight spot, and only masculaxi can save the day (since their body is unaffected due to the miasma only affecting organic lifeforms,) laxi goes into their heart to search for mascula and plead him to help her. all this time, laxi had envied mascula's heart for being "more human," but realized that maestro had written the fear of death in all of the android's hearts, and as such, laxi understood the weight of their yearning for peace, with the act of their self-sacrifice for euden. (later we do learn with gala masculaxi that mascula had been influencing laxi more. here we see laxi's influence on mascula to urge him to fight.) laxi gets mascula out of the gay baby jail zone, releases her limiters, and activates annihilation mode hastily. mascula then guides her attacks to the correct targets, which is the first instance we see of mascula engaging in any sort of fighting. in this state of laxi's annihilation mode combined with mascula's guided assault, a new mode beyond annihilation mode becomes available to them: eden mode, when their hearts become one. this mode concentrates all the mana around them inside their body's mana kiln, and gives them even more power. mascula still dislikes fighting and does not want to do it as much, but has a newfound conviction and will not run away when he is needed. an interesting line here is mascula saying this: ▷It's as if he knew our hearts would one day become one. But how...?◁ indicating that from the start, they were truly two halves of a whole ideal. shortly after the release of ch14, we get the release of the flame dagger gala masculaxi unit, which contains eden mode in their gameplay, and expands upon the "two hearts acting as one" deal they have going on. laxi, mascula, and luca head to the ruins of maestro's lab in order to gain more clues on how eden mode works. laxi equips a new armament meant to accommodate eden mode (and demands praise of how good she looks, lol. also laxi is much more snarky in this story which is a treat. she's so funny. but also this shows mascula's emotional influence on her!!!!!) laxi learns of how eden mode works, and essentially it's a release of all limiters and rerouting all circuits to their internal mana kiln, but elimination protocol is activated automatically as well which does not make any distinction between friend and foe. it enhances laxi's combat ability, but mascula has to take care of elimination protocol since he has access and control of it. hence, in eden mode, laxi goes all out in attacking, while mascula controls the body's movements and targets. however this is only possible if their hearts act as one. the two are attacked by dyrenell forces and activate eden mode against them, but mascula temporarily loses the will to fight in the middle of the battle, destabilizing and deactivating eden mode. luca is captured and a villager shields them from an oncoming attack, believing in mascula's peaceful ideals. laxi engages tactical retreat and they escape. they engage in a plan to save luca but are attacked by imperials again. they try to go into eden mode but mascula once again disengages eden mode. mascula tells laxi of his regrets and frustrations that he keeps holding her back, but laxi tells him that she found herself synchronizing with him. with the villager (that mascula had saved before and in turn protected masculaxi earlier,) laxi found the value in mercy for enemies. by having laxi bend towards mascula's will, they're able to take on the imperials who chased after them with a truly synchronized eden mode. ▷Laxi, give me the strength to fight!◁ Granted. Now give me the kindness required to temper my actions. ▷Heh. Take all you need!◁ their system strain falls, and they're able to defeat the imperials. laxi, mascula, luca, and euden talk together after all is done. laxi takes interest in a cat, while mascula teaches her how to interact with it. Euden: Laxi and Mascula say the maestro who made them was a peace-loving man, but... Luca: No, I getcha. Why would some peacenik give something THIS much power? ch14 and their gala story really shows how the two embodied different sides of the same ideal -- "fighting for peace," and how they begin to converge upon that ideal. initially laxi only focused on "fighting" and mascula only focused on "peace," but A compassionate heart. ▷The courage to fight.◁ -Eden Mode, activate!- their character development after this is a bit wonky at times because it sets up for gala mascula who is really poorly written and doesn't necessarily align with the ideals established within ch14 and gala masculaxi, or even the development directly before it either. with ageless artifice and ch18 (when the team first enters the faerie kingdom and gets lost,) we get teasers of mascula with his own body. in ageless artifice, eirene steals mascula's body and intends to use it against masculaxi, but mascula takes control of his body and proclaims that his body isn't necessarily him, but what IS him is his resolve to fight for peace alongside his friends. (stays in line with gala masculaxi, right?) in ch18 we also see mascula having a "nightmare/illusion" in which he gains his body back but at the cost of laxi going berserk once more, showing that they truly cannot function at their "fullest ideal" without each other in the same body. laxi asks mascula if he wants his own body back, and mascula says he sometimes misses it but overall he wants to continue fighting with her the way they are. this is echoed in ch19, take this exchange for example: Mascula, I know you were thinking of your own body while lost in the mountain's illusions. You gave up your body to save me, and I owe you an apology for that. ▷Don't apologize—I wanted to do it. Plus, being with you makes me happy.◁ I want to see a peaceful world just as we are in this body now—together. ▷I feel the exact same way.◁ ▷No more hesitation. You and I are going to fight with Maestro as a team.◁ And together... ▷...we will bring peace.◁ reaffirming their ideals together and keeping in line with their development, right? mascula doesn't WANT his own body back. he wants to keep fighting with laxi, that's THE WHOLE POINT OF THEIR CHARACTERS. which does not make sense when we get the remote control BS IN THE SAME CHAPTER??? (teased from the ending of ageless artifice with chelle) and mascula has his own body again as a remote control system. now the portrayal in the main story wasn't AS bad but... the real problem comes to gala mascula as an adventurer with his stories and voice lines. this "mascula" proclaims of how much he loves/misses his body and how he "doesn't need laxi dragging him around anymore." like sure he sometimes feels being in laxi's body with her is bothersome but overall, at his heart, he wouldn't really say something like that??? mascula your voice lines are so contradictory to what just happened in the main story and what you said in ageless artifice what happened!!!!!!! his adventurer story lacks the cooperative laxi-mascula dynamic we knew and loved, and instead pushes mascula front and center to try to push him to do things himself. we didn't really need mascula getting his own body back anyways, but you COULD'VE AT LEAST written it so that they have more emphasis on cooperation with each other?? god im sorry i just. AUGH he's so OBVIOUSLY hastily pushed into their development arc and he loses his characterization. it's obvious gala mascula wasn't intended to be a thing in the initial plan for masculaxi... i am not forgiving every single one of you who sent in feedback for playable mascula. once again only half joking... maybe only a quarter joking. 1/8ths joking. radioactive decay graph joking. (also just a tiny nitpick: you can apparently run gala mascula and laxi/gala laxi on the same team. lore compliancy who? eden mode can't be activated while the remote control unit is active. but whatever) though another interesting plot point is brought up in his story though? maestro's origins, the writing of "seek peace" on mascula and laxi's bodies being in a language that only the sky city ark people would know.. with such an elaborate plan for such a complex android duo, and everything else mysterious about this man, just who is he? his master plan of masculaxi was really amazing to see come to fruition... maestro fought on the side of dyrenell, against dragons -- against elysium you could say. although ex machina seeks the destruction of terrestrial life because they "allied with the dragons" (a misconception,) on the contrary maybe maestro aimed to create an ultimate weapon for terrestrials to defend themselves against the dragons. however this weapon had to also understand the value of what it was fighting for -- learning for itself how to go about "fighting for peace." thus, the creation of the twins mascula and laxi; two halves of a whole. by having a compassionate and adaptable heart, they can change with the times, understand the people around them, and decide on their own what the best course of action is in various situations. i love love LOVE masculaxi and how they're written!! (for the most part.) two of my faves in the game and i love them and their characterization so much, i just wish more people could see the intricacies of their relationship and how they're literally like. 1/2 of the same thing. it's such a beautifully written dynamic and development, and i want others to appreciate it too.
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a little bonus, in this character art, you can see the "star tetrahedron" shapes. in sacred geometry symbolism, the "star tetrahedron" is the sixth shape enclosed within "metatron's cube." these shapes, and this cube, are said to maintain the balance of the world itself and its flows/processes. as for the "star tetrahedron" itself, it represents duality: physical body and spiritual self; male and female; and heaven and earth. this ties into mascula and laxi's characters: mascula controlling the "mind" in eden mode while laxi focuses on the attacking "body;" and mascula and laxi being of different genders. as for "heaven" and "earth," this could represent maestro coming from the sky city ark, and masculaxi being technology intended to aid humans. alternatively for "heaven" and "earth," the fact that the star tetrahedron is enclosed within "metatron's cube" may be a pointer to metatron in-universe. the archangels all have white hair, a trait shared by masculaxi. additionally, sandalphon is somewhat mechanical/technological herself. masculaxi being man-made (of the earth,) versus their potential connection to the angels (of the heavens.)
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dragalialore · 4 years
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What can you tell us about the dragons from Dragalia lost?
The answer is, simultaneously: not a lot and quite a bit! For a game so deeply centered around dragons, the game doesn’t always go into the specifics of dragons.
Let’s talk about what we can learn/infer from the various stories that spit exposition at us.
The main story, at least in the beginning chapters, doesn’t really shed too much light on the specifics of dragons, but we do know that dragons can make pacts with certain people that allows those people to shapeshift into them. In addition, making pacts with multiple dragons is basically unheard of since Alberius the Founder; that’s what makes Euden so special.
In the third chapter, while Brunhilda is being attacked, the following two statements are made by Cleo:
Cleo:  There's a disturbance in the mana here. Some ill has befallen the dragon. We may already be too late.
Cleo:  We should make haste. The Flamewyrm is a fearsome beast, but she also presides over the volcano and holds its fury in check. Were she to be silenced, the result would be nothing less than catastrophic.
The implication of these is that dragons and mana are intrinsically intertwined, as well as dragons have an influence on the forces of nature. Sophie’s character story provides invaluable insight on what mana actually is and how it works as well:
Magic and mana are linked to each other, and humans are connected to them both.
The teachings of the Church say as much:
"Thus did humanity use the magic which springs forth from mana to develop the land and advance their civilization."
If not for mana, we might still be painting cave walls and hunting with knives made of stone and flint.
So basically, mana is a tangential energy that is absorbed by spellcasters and helps civilization progress. Handy!
In Chapter Three we can also draw conclusions from a few lines of dialogue in An Impassioned Ally:
Euden: I didn't know dragons could shapeshift.
Brunhilda: Not all can. I just happen to be more resourceful than most. You may shower me with praise at any time now.
Brunhilda:  Leaving the volcano will drain some of my power, but so be it.
So, not all dragons can shapeshift into a more humanoid form, but some can. Additionally, the reason Brunhilda is so powerful is because she lives in a volcano, which is rife with fire mana.
There are also a few VERY interesting points brought up in Chapter Four, in the stories A Faint Presence and The Paladyn’s Calling. In the first, Mym complains of smelling a nearby dragon, but not knowing which it is. Notte reveals that it’s probably her:
Don't you know that faeries are distant kin to the dragons? So if you smell dragon, that's me you're sniffing, sister!
The reason faeries are distant relatives to dragons is because of the mana they carry; therefore, we can finally define dragons as creatures that can absorb and use mana. We also know that they are affected by the mana’s weakness from a line of dialogue in The Paladyn’s Calling:
Will you be all right, Mym? I imagine high altitudes like these are exceptionally difficult for a fire dragon.
Mym, being a fire dragon, doesn’t do well in the cold. Makes sense. That’s also why Jupiter makes his home up on a mountain; he’s associated more with lightning rather than light itself, and he can generate plenty of that on a mountain top.
But there’s more! It takes seven whole-ass story chapters to get any character to state the exact definition of “dragon,” in Chapter Seven’s History of a Continent, where Cleo comments on the ruins surrounding them and Mym explains that they were destroyed by dragons:
Cleo: Did these structures pose some threat to dragonkind?
Mym: Perhaps not, but look there. See those metal cogs and wheels lying about? Such things disrupt the flow of mana. Dragons are avatars of nature itself, and don't take kindly to humanity's tinkering. Especially not in the past, when relations between our people were rocky at best. You can see their anger in how thoroughly they tore this place apart.
We don’t actually learn how they mess with mana until Chapter Twelve, though:
Cleo: I heard tales of mana kilns long ago.
Cleo: They are devices that absorb natural mana in order to create a kind of artificial mana. However, I have never seen one with my own two eyes before this day.
Creatures that are so heavily reliant on mana to survive don’t like devices that absorb mana and make it into something different? Makes sense.
(Laxi has a mana kiln in her but that’s a rabbit hole for another day.)
So, to summarize:
Dragons are powerful creatures that heavily rely on specific types of mana, depending on the dragon. Some dragons can shapeshift into a more humanoid form, but the requirements for this aren’t exactly known. (Mym DOES specifically say she’s borrowing the appearance of one of Alberius’s retainers, so... maybe they need a blueprint first?) Since they’re so reliant on certain mana, certain dragons will inhabit certain environments, such as Brunhilda living in a volcano and Mercury drawing her power from the sea. (Which is why they set up the water dracolith in Chapter Seven!) Machines that interrupt the world’s natural flow of mana are extremely bad for dragons, and when they existed in the past they would often band together to destroy such devices.
I’ve probably missed some information (still working to compile lore in a way that’s easier to flip through than the existing wiki), but this is a pretty solid foundation!
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zeravmeta · 4 years
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hey since this is my blog and i can do whatever i want im gonna lose my absolute shit at the parralels between Akasha and Heinwald because hoLy BALLS these two
The main thing between the two of them stems not from their interest in knowledge but from their responsibility with it. Akasha from her adventurer story was revealed to originally be this push-over scholar who believed that all the indignities she was made to suffer would ultimately never matter because she was "nothing" and she would eventually reach her own truth. However she's showing this in an illusion to Heinwald, who after seeing her sacrifice/combine herself to the entity within the grimoire (very likely the TRUE Hastur or even the Ancient-One thats referenced multiple times based off the Stirring Shadows event) to truly become Akasha or "Void", immediately questions the truth of the illusion to which Akasha herself says it may or may not be true but the reality is that she doesn't remember how or why she became this way. Akasha also apparently can apply a universal concept of permanence through time to make either past or future events exist in the present which is why the friendship gang know her even though they've technically never met until the "future" and how she can communicate to her younger self and inspire her to actually be selfish for once. This permanence through time was only circumvented by Heinwald, Lathna, and curiously Curran as well.
Heinwald, after learning about all this just laughs at how much of a hypocrite she is and that he would have much preferred to meet her original self who actually wanted to learn because of her natural curiosity rather than amass information aimlessly, which may seem hypocritical from him but a very clear distinction between Heinwald and Akasha here is that Akasha doesnt care about the consequences of her actions anymore while Heinwald cares too much.
Heinwald in his adventurer stories reveals he's massively empathetic of people and that he feels personally responsible for any suffering caused by his investigations and sleuthing habits because it ultimately got his family killed. He goes so far as to call Euden a greater genius than him solely because Euden helps him realize that he shouldn't be responsible for every single problem ever since that's Eudens mission to build a greater kingdom. Heinwald criticizes Akasha because he doesn't seek truth for the truths sake, but he does so to help people. Akasha on the other hand lost any and all empathy for the people around her because she finally believed she found purpose and didn't have to restrain her emotions anymore. Her family was abusive and negligent, her professor was stealing her research and she was hated by jealous scholars for her work, but she was able to keep it all in because she still had an escape in her studies. However when that was taken she decided to fully give herself up to the entity and merge with them (its implied by the dialogue here that Akasha may have thought she would die in this ritual), abandoning everyone and wanting to unleash the Ancient-One for no reason other than that she has freedom to do something for once so she wants to see what happens.
Based on the ending of the Stirring Shadows event, it's revealed that Akashas goal wasn't actually to use Lathna as the key and herself as the gate (which is implied to be ANOTHER attempted suicide since Akasha decribed that she would literally be wrenched open and summon the Ancient-One out of herself) but rather set the pieces in place for Heinwald to awaken his own connection to the abyss, which at the very end Heinwald pulls a reverse uno on her and says he was already awakened and that Lathna was just another necessary piece for whatever her eventual plot is. She planned to fail her ritual by setting Heinwald and Curran up to find her mid-ritual so as to ensure that Lathna awakens.
Overall these two are such opposite characters yet in Akashas final story she understands she's twisted and CHALLENGES Heinwald to see which one between the two of them would be saved, if Heinwald would accept what he is and drown in the Ancient-Ones all knowing or if Akasha would come to terms with what she is and build genuine bonds with others HEINWALD WAS TEMPTED BY HER BECAUSE HES STILL VERY NATURALLY CURIOUS BUT AT THE SAME TIME THE ONLY INSTANCE OF A VULNERABLE AKASHA WAS WHEN SHE WAS SHARING HER STORY OF BEING ALONE WITH HIM THESE TWO ARE SO SIMILAR THE ONLY REASON AKASHA TURNED WAS BECAUSE SHE DIDNT HAVE A CURRAN OF HER OWN HEINWALD WAS PRETTY MUCH NEGLECTED BY EVERYONE AND HE ENDED UP GETTING HIS OWN FAMILY KILLED YET EVEN IF HE WOULD BE BRANDED A HERETIC HE DIDNT CARE BUT CURRAN ACCEPTED HIM AS HE IS HE UNDERSTANDS HEINWALD BETTER THAN HIMSELF AND FOR SOMEONE TRAPPED IN HIS OWN MORAL QUANDRIES ITS CURRANS SIMPLE LOGIC AND ACCEPTANCE OF HIS MANNERISMS THAT CEMENTS HIM AS HEINWALDS FRIEND AND WITH THAT SAME TYPE OF ACCEPTANCE AKASHA COULD ALSO FIND GENUINE COMPANIONS IN THE TWO OF THEN AND IM LIVING FOR THIS ROAD TO EL DORADO TRIO DYNAMIC
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murasaki-murasame · 4 years
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I honestly wasn’t planning to summon for Gala Thor at first, since I want to focus on saving for stuff like the end of year holiday banners, but he ended up looking really strong and also I want to make Tartarus less of a miserable slog to get through with my light units in any way possible, without resorting to ‘haha dark characters go brr :)’, so here we are, lol.
Results under the cut [plus some of my thoughts about the new Tartarus fight]
I started with about 260 summons saved up [which is part of why I wanted to skip it, since I prefer to have at least 300 summons before pulling on a banner], but in just 60 summons I got:
-Ramona dupe [one day I’ll get Gala Elly . . . ]
-Dupe Liger [now at either 1UB or 2UB, I can’t remember which]
-Dupe Pazuzu and Simurgh [they’re both now MUB so that’s nice, even though I don’t use them, lol]
-Ramiel x2 [I don’t really care much about him one way or another since I have other good shadow dragons but it’s nice to have him]
-Gala Thor
At first I was a bit disappointed by Gala Thor, since he gives a base 50% strength and an additional 45% bonus strength based on your energy stacks, which seemed kinda lame compared to Mars, but it turns out that having just one energy stack gives you a bonus 25% strength, with the other stacks giving an extra 5% each, so basically you almost always have 75% strength, which is really nice, and I think at least puts him at par with Daikokuten.
Also apparently his damage mods when shapeshifted, including his dragon skill, are super high, so he works really nicely with someone like Gala Euden, who I’ve basically ended up maining against Tartarus. 
It’ll be a while before the DPS sim updates, but I think Thor’s probably gonna have a pretty big impact on how strong the light roster is, so that’s neat.
Though tbh I think a lot of people are still gonna end up just using shadow units against Tartarus, even if Thor helps bridge the gap between light and shadow units a bit. Which is it’s own whole problem with the game’s balance, lol. I think if they just gave Tartarus poison immunity, that’d probably be enough to actually make everyone use light units in the fight, but I still feel like they need to give endgame bosses way higher off-element damage resistance.
I haven’t managed to get many clears of Tartarus yet, but I have a lot of mixed feelings about the fight. I’m happy to finally have a relevant piece of content to use my light units in, and I like most of the mechanics in the fight, but a lot of it doesn’t really work well in practice, and there’s some really annoying parts of the fight too. Mainly the fact that they decided to keep the enervation mechanic from Void Nidhogg, lol. I quit doing that fight as soon as the shadow Chimera came out specifically because it makes that fight such a goddamn slog, and it continues to be just as awful in Tartarus. And they somehow made it even worse by deciding to give it to you unavoidably at least once in the fight. At least in Void Nidhogg you could dodge everything and never get enervated, but you have to deal with it at least once in this fight.
Also, the whole portal mechanic is extremely cool, and I hope they experiment with more stuff like this in the future, but I feel like every time I go back to the main arena, I have like I have to immediately try and figure out which part of the fight I walked back in on, and usually I have like two seconds to react before one of the screen-wide attacks happens and kills me. It’s really disorienting, lol.
The prison mechanic in general is also kinda hard to wrap my head around, and I feel like it requires maybe a bit more team coordination than is reasonable to expect from a game like this, but really I think it’s just my punishment for never doing High Zodiark, since I think it’s one of the many parts of this fight that are really similar to that fight, and I have absolutely no experience with any of them.
Anyway, now that Tartarus is out it’s making me think back on the Agito bosses as a whole, before we move into the 2nd anniversary where we’ll probably at least get a hint at the next phase of endgame content, and in spite of the various issues I have with them, I think the Agito fights are a huge improvement over the High Dragon fights. You can really tell how Cygames [for better or worse] was trying to shake things up and figure out how to make engaging endgame fights, and for the most part I think it worked out.
The difficulty balance between all the fights [especially counting the Master fights] is kinda all of the place, like how eKai is extremely easy while eAO and eTart are kinda obnoxiously long and difficult if you do them in the intended ways, but I think that at least shows how they kept trying new things. mKai’s also apparently a lot harder than eKai [though I haven’t tried it], so they clearly learnt from the feedback they got from that.
I think Volk and Ciella are probably my favourite of the Agito fights at the moment, for different reasons. Volk feels really well-balanced for the current state of the flame roster, and has mechanics that require a degree of cooperation and coordination without being overly punishing like Tartarus kinda feels at the moment. And on the other hand, I really like Ciella’s fight because it feels like it’s just at the right level of difficulty for me to be able to reliably do by myself. At least on manual. I’ve never really managed to get auto solo to work, but I enjoy doing it manually. Either way, it’s nice to have endgame fights like this that can be comfortably soloed if you have a strong enough team, and I really like how for Ciella you have to build a really tanky, defense-oriented team in order to be able to solo it. I feel like 90% of the game basically punishes you for trying to do anything other than raw damage-dealing, so I really appreciate that Ciella is designed in a way that rewards you for making tanky team comps. It also lets Sylas be genuinely meta for something, which I’m grateful for, and it gave Templar Hope some redemption after he was initially deemed as being kinda worthless after he came out.
I also like how status effects are integrated into the fight mechanics, and [for the most part] both status resistances for each element feel like they have a purpose in their Agito fight. Compared to HDTs where it feels like every element roster is split between ‘units that are good for the fight’ and ‘units that are immediately handicapped’. This is actually one part where I think Tartarus works really well as a boss fight, since unless you can kill him before the poison portals happen, you really need a poison-res character to deal with them.
We still have three more of the Master fights to come out, but either way I really like the Agito fights, and I’m optimistic for whatever the next set of endgame content will be. Personally, I’m still hoping for them to build upon the Imperial Onslaught mode, since that feels like an almost obsolete part of the game, but that sort of wave-based content would be nice to have for endgame co-op.
Also, I still really hope that the Agito bosses end up being DL’s version of the Eternals/Evokers from GBF, where we can eventually get the ability to recruit them as playable characters by doing lots of grinding. They might just get released as gala units instead, but I’d prefer it if they were obtainable through grinding.
On the one hand they’re basically all villains, but on the other hand the recent story chapter made it pretty obvious that they’re probably all being warped and twisted by the masks Nedrick gave them, so it’d be pretty easy to explain how they could eventually be recruited. Also GBF has it’s own share of characters who probably shouldn’t be recruitable for moral reasons but they still are, lol.
Also when you fight them in-game it already looks like they have the same sorts of character model rigs as normal adventurers, and their attack animations all seem at least roughly based on regular weapon types [Volk being a lance unit, Kai Yan being an axe unit, Ciella being a bow unit, Ayaha/Otoha being dagger units, and Tartarus being a blade unit], so I feel like it wouldn’t be hard to make them playable. Ayaha/Otoha would probably be the hardest one to make work unless they get released as two separate characters, but it’s possible that they’d be a unique case where you use them both in combat at the same time, and switch between which one you’re actively controlling. 
It’s probably a bit too early for any of this to happen since the Agito have basically only just gotten introduced in the main story, so it probably won’t be touched upon for the 2nd anniversary, but I still think it’ll happen eventually.
Anyway, all that aside, at the moment I’m basically just gonna keep saving my summons for either a rerun of Gala Elly/Alex, or the holiday banners. In particular I really want to do lots of summons on the New Years banner. I know we’re gonna have Gala Zena or something next month for the anniversary, but if it’s anything like last year we’ll get lots of free summons during her banner, so I’ll at least wait and see how that works out before I spend any resources chasing her.
I also don’t really care much for Nevin and Pinon so even though I didn’t get them, I’m just gonna quit on this banner while I’m ahead, lol
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lunahearts · 5 years
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I can’t believe I’m doing this but I think I have to announce that I am starting an
Alberian Heirs Defense* Club
*some defending may involve repeated whacking with a stick
By which I mean, I genuinely don’t understand why people are writing them off as horrible, unforgivable people after the last chapter, when I thought it did a great job of showcasing their goals and motives for allying with Morsayati. So I’m going to write up a quick break-down of each of them + some other thoughts, on why I think they are all Super Duper Valid*
*in some cases, being valid may mean they have been validated and approved for stick whacking, specifically
So, starting off with Leonidas. He’s pretty obviously the person most deserving of a Stick Whack (TM), and also imho the most likely of all the heirs to stick to his villain role... he seems pretty dedicated to it. That being said, it’s worth nothing that he does have a very strong set of morals, and I genuinely believe his joining up with Morsayati has more to do with it being the right choice for his goals than anything else. If he didn’t think that pledging allegiance now was the right choice for creating the world he wants later, I don’t think he would have done it. Which is interesting! I could see a temporary alliance down the road between him and Euden, if things change and their goals align. Leonidas doesn’t care who he is working with, as long as they are bringing him closer to creating a world where people make their way solely through their own power.
Next we have Phares, our resident amoral scientist, and the other contender for the “strong, but bad” morals crown. Phares doesn’t give a fuck about any of this, he just wants answers, as any scientist would, of course. I do think Phares is much more likely for redemption than Leonidas, because his pursuit of the truth is explicitly grounded in his own strange illness/curse. He wants a cure, he wants to know what hides behind the curtain, and he doesn’t much care who gets hurt in the process. I don’t think we know whether Phares was always curious and vaguely amoral, and that led to the curse, or if he was born cursed and that led to his curiosity, but I’m sure we will delve into that down the road. Phares is also sort of a representative of the clash between human technology and dragons in the distant past, which I’m sure will be important & is already implied to be a pretty complex situation. His refusal to take historical accounts at face value could prove very useful to Euden and/or the plot.
Moving down the line, we have Chelle. The story has examined her motivations much more closely than the other heirs, so I won’t go on about them as much here. Besides, much of the point of her chapter was that we don’t know her motivations. So suffice it to say for now... we don’t know her motivations. Assuming that Chelle betrayed Euden at this point is a little preemptive. She put herself where she needed to be. Now, whether she wanted to be there only for her own sake, or whether she plans to help Euden in the future, remains to be seen. Knowing her, it’s both. But whatever the case is, she certainly wasn’t better off trying to stand beside Euden just now. She works from the shadows, and in the shadows she has remained. How convenient for her :3c That being said I will eat my hat if Chelle doesn’t have more selfless motives than she lets on
Which leads us next to Valyx, who is an interesting outlier here. Unlike the rest of the heirs, Valyx claims to act not for his own interest, but in order to bring peace to the kingdom. I think it would be easy to just call him a fool and be done with it, but he’s not exactly wrong that giving in to Morsayati will bring peace, while struggling against him will lead to more death and destruction. I hope we get to see more of Valyx, because I think he’s an interesting foil to Euden’s selflessness. Euden expresses selflessness by choosing to fight for the people he cares about, while Valyx expresses it through choosing not to fight, even against someone like Morsayati. I would love to see what made him believe so strongly in his path, and how he truly feels about his own choices.
And lastly of course that leaves Emile, who explicitly tells us that he’s has chosen to side with Morsayati because he got picked on. Cool motive, still mur- no okay I have to admit I actually think this is interesting and I do feel a little bad for Emile here. I mean, he’s still a spoiled brat, and probably falls into the stick-whack category, but that’s kind of the point. Amidst all of these larger-than-life personalities and world shaping ambitions, I think it’s great to have someone who just... feels like the world hasn’t given him what he deserves. “Entitled kid is radicalized to violence through isolation, ego-stroking, and promises of deserved glory” is an especially interesting backstory when the character is teetering just on the edge of too far gone. Which way he tips remains to be seen, because it has more to do with his actions after this point than it does with his choice to follow Morsayati.
And to wrap this up, I would also like to specifically point out that everyone in that room, including Euden himself and all of his allies, did genuinely consider accepting Morsayati’s offer. They agreed it could be a path to peace. They agreed it could be the only option. What stopped them? Zethia.
Euden loves Zethia. Euden refuses to give up his fight for her. And the moment he realizes that, he also realizes that he doesn’t just believe in peace, he believes in a world in which people fight for the people they love. And Morsayati cannot provide that world. So he stands up, says no, and rallies his allies behind him.
But the other heirs? They don’t know Zethia. They barely even know each other. They have all lived isolated lives, learning to strive not for other people, but for their own ambitions. In some ways, I would argue that one of the biggest differences between Euden and his siblings is just that he had a Zethia...
And they didn’t.
They do have a Euden, though. And there is no way he’s letting them go without a fight.
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geometragic · 5 years
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✔ TALK TO ME ABT POSSIBILITY FAM what u want n what u can see
Send me ✔ and I will bold my preferences for your muse! || @rulerborn || Accepting!
My muse(s): Shibata Katsuie
Do I know your muse(s): yes | no | a little | tell me about your muse
Setting: our verse | my verse | your verse | modern | alternate universe | other
Pre-established relationships? yes | no | depends on the relationship
Possible relationships: friends | classmate | co-worker | roommate | family, real or adopted | dating or blind date | married | friends with benefits | unrequited love | lending a hand | teacher - student | rivals | allies | partner-in-crime | enemies | protector - guarded | business partners | spy - infiltrated | manipulator - manipulated | star-crossed | first meeting | other
I’m in the mood for: fluff | angst | horror | romance | humor | crime | hurt / comfort | action | supernatural | slice of life | crack | dark threads | light threads | any genre | multi-para | shorter para | one-line | any length | plotted threads | unplotted threads | other
Feel free to: message me ooc | message me ic | tell me your ideas | write a starter | answer one of my opens | send a meme | reblog this with your preferences - let’s find common interests!
As far as Main!Xander goes…I think that for either Default!Katsuie or for a Dragalia Lost verse for Katsuie, Xander could end up as a mentor (sort of) to Katsuie ? Sort of like how some of the meme replies have gone over on your blog so far. XD On Katsuie’s end…I feel like he’d be one of the few people who’d respect Xander as a king, but I feel like he wouldn’t pick up on Xander’s compassion as quickly as everyone else would. Katsuie would mentally put him in the pile of ‘powerful kings’ (including Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, etc.) and wouldn’t even bother to look for compassion in Xander’s actions, because he hasn’t seen that in other kings that he knows (especially Nobunaga) and therefore assumes that, by nature, kings aren’t compassionate and don’t need to be. Anyhow, I could see Katsuie potentially traveling with Xander / staying in the Halidom with Euden and everyone else, mostly because he doesn’t have anything better to do with his life. Oh, by the way, all of this would still apply for Impersonator!Xander, since Katsuie would at least initially be fooled by his confidence and assume that he was a real king, and it’d probably take a while for Katsuie to figure out otherwise.
As for Dyrenell!Xander…I could maybe see him and Katsuie bonding over a shared sort of misery ? That is, if Dyrenell!Xander is open enough to bond with anyone over shared misery. XD I also haven’t gotten that far in the story for Dragalia Lost (I’ve only just started Chapter 4 XD), so I feel like I need to play through more of the story before I understand more about how Dyrenell works.
I think that either of Xander’s Fate verses could be interesting, too. For Xander’s Servant verse, I can see Katsuie having at least as much trouble getting him to follow orders as he does with Fate!Nobunaga. XD And for Xander’s Master verse, maybe he and Master!Katsuie could become allies ? Well, Xander would definitely be the one in charge, though. XD Katsuie would just follow along because he resents his extended family for pushing him into becoming a Master in the Holy Grail War, and also because he’d figure that Xander is a better Magus than he is, so Katsuie would figure that he’d have a better chance of making it out of the Holy Grail War alive by following Xander. That is, assuming Xander would even have any interest in becoming allies with an inferior Magus like Katsuie… XD
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miketendo-64 · 5 years
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Developer: Cygames / Nintendo EPD
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: iOS / Android
Review Version: Android Version 1.0.1
Category: Action & Role-Playing
Release Date: September 27, 2018 (JP & NA)
    The Dragalia may be Lost but you can find a hit RPG in the making, over in the App and Google Play stores!
When the reveal of Dragalia Lost first come about earlier this year, it was at the time, a bit random. Not only was we revelling in the reveal of a new Nintendo collaboration as far as their mobile games go, but it would be a mobile game concerning a new IP and release it this year.
Fast forward to the present. Although Dragalia Lost did not see a release in the likes of Australia, New Zealand, Canada or even Europe, the Cygames developed title did get to have the United States added as a day one launch title and it’s a good thing it did because Dragalia Lost is actually a pretty impressive RPG.
It’s nowhere near as impressive as the likes of Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country, which is just godly, but Dragalia Lost, even with the gacha system at play, is an impressive game that feels too good for mobile devices.
I know the same can be said for a few RPG mobile games, but having played it as much as I have, it does actually feel like a game that would have been better off on the Nintendo 3DS or even the Nintendo Switch. It would naturally need bigger levels and more content to feel right at home on either platform as a “true game,” but Dragalia Lost is a gem that does have a great way of demonstrating what a gacha RPG should be like.
Still, that’s enough praise for the meantime, after all, we’ve to get into all the nitty gritty details, so let’s correct that shall we? First and foremost, Dragalia Lost is not just another Japanese action role-playing game, it’s a JRPG that comes to us from Cygames, a developer who is no stranger to making mobile games and monetizing them in such a way that everyone can benefit.
Only, it’s not just Cygames who are involved as Nintendo are also getting their hands dirty with it and the love child the two companies have created is a delight that you can choose to play on your own, or on the go. But as far as co-op goes, we’ll cover that later, first up is the story.
In typical fantasy-setting JRPG fashion, Dragalia Lost is an anime-like game, which in its current state, takes place in or around the Kingdom of Alberia. As for its story and main protagonist, both revolve around a young prince by the name of Euden, seventh in the line to the throne of Alberia. He’s also the twin brother to Zethia.
Both he and his sister are born from a royal family that possesses an ability most do not and that ability forming pacts with dragons, which in turn allows them to transform into the dragons they’ve formed a pact with, temporarily.
Only, unlike their older siblings and father, at the beginning of the game, neither Euden or Zethia have formed a pact with a dragon, since Euden has deliberately avoided doing so and Zethia actually walks a different path altogether from her family.
Now, I could go into detail as to why that is, but Dragalia Lost is a new game that is currently denied to most of the world, so I’m actually avoiding spoilers as if they were the bubonic plague. However, what I can elaborate on, is the fact that in typical RPG fashion, what was meant to be a simple task, ends up being anything but and poor Euden ends up finding his whole life getting turned upside down.
In the first 6 chapters of the game, he’ll come face to an ancient evil that the world (Grastaea) has been threatened by before, make new friends who will join him in arms and embrace a path he wished never to walk and enter into pacts with more than just one Dragon.
As for the title and its relevance to the game, Dragalia is the word used to describe the trust between humans and the dragons they’ve formed a pact with. A Dragalia that was then lost and Euden is determined to see restored, along with peace for all.
Were Dragalia Lost an RPG on any other platform, the full story and experience would be available to you from the get-go, but it’s not. In the game’s current state, its main campaign only features 6 playable chapters, the last of which comes with a yet cliff-hanger ending that seems to scream “End of Part One.”
This ending is then followed by a notification that tells the player that the story will continue when the game’s next update rolls outs. (Yay!) It is something of a shame that players can reach the end within 10 hours of playing, but there is more to Dragalia Lost than just a main campaign made up of 6 chapters, which in turn are made up of areas that have their own playable levels and story segments, there are side quests in the form of missions in the Events tab.
For the most part, they play out a lot like the main campaign quests, except these are quests you can just play over and over, in a bid to grind gold, upgrade materials and elemental upgrade materials.
As for how to play, the quests are pretty straight-forward. Players must navigate a given area, using their finger on the screen and sliding it in the direction they wish to move. Upon seeing an enemy they wish to hit, they must tap repeatedly and when available, press the highlighted skill icon or even the highlighted dragon icon, to perform a special attack or turn into a dragon and deal devastating damage.
If you go with the latter, the transformation will not last forever, as it is a temporary act, which can be shortened if enemies attack the player, since getting hit shortens the duration, but it can be increased by improving your bond with your partnered dragon when out of battle. (More on this later.)
Most levels consist of two areas, the first which you must explore and contains things like environmental hazards, enemies, crates and that can drop a health-restoring item that acts immediately and chests that drop useful items and weapons. As for the second area, they’re where you can expect to engage a big bad boss in battle, who may or may not be alone.
By completing a level, players can earn EXP for their characters and themselves, as well as keep the items they discovered. If they fail it, they can opt to use Diamantium (a type of currency players will need to buy with real-world money,) or Wyrmite (a type of currency that players can earn,) to continue.
Personally, on the occasions I did die on a level, I never did bother with paying to continue, as I just took my failure to mean I should forget about trying to do a level on my own, and do it via co-op instead.
How the two modes differ is fairly minimal and co-op is very beneficial. You see, when playing on your own, players will need to make a team of up to 4 Adventurers, equip them with the best weapons, dragons and Wyrmprints they have (a card like item that each have their own special effects.) You’ll also need to try and make sure their levels are similar, but not with co-op.
With co-op mode, players only ever need to focus on having one high powered character and dragon, as they can then join up or create a room of their own and be paired with a team full of high-powered. Sometimes you can create a room and everyone is ready to go within seconds, but other times, it can be a couple of minutes before everyone is ready to set off.
I’d say the waiting can be exhausting at times, or at least a little long-winded, but playing with others is the best way to play Dragalia Lost and get all of the good stuff. You can also communicate with one another by using stickers and for every new player you play with, you can get another 50 Wyrmite for free.
Another co-op benefit, which is a rather big one, is the fact it offers a way to keep on playing when you run out of stamina. Being a mobile game, a stamina is expected, but with Getherwings, players can use these free items to join rooms created by other players and play with them, while you wait for your stamina to fill (6 minutes to recover one stamina point.) or level up.
When levelling up, not only will your stamina recover, but your Getherwings will be restored as well. Essentially, co-op is a great means of playing Dragalia Lost for free, for hours on end. You will not have to worry about investing a cent into the game, but you might want to have your charger handy as Dragalia Lost is a battery killer.
It is also a mobile data eater as it has constant downloads all throughout unless you decide to do a batch download as soon as you can and just download everything (all the levels, event quests, Adventurer Stories and the rest.)
Sure, downloading everything will have the game take up a whopping 2.51 GB on your mobile device, but one additional download is better than having to download each and every level when you go to play them.
Anyhow, even if you invest a hundred hours fighting, the battles are only half the war as Dragalia Lost has lots of other features and facilities for players to take advantage of and strengthen their units. You do however need to make sure you continue playing the main campaign long enough to unlock the likes of an auto play mode that will have an AI control your team of 4, unlock Castle, and a few other things, such as a hard mode.
Ultimately, it depends on how the player chooses to play Dragalia Lost, in which they’ll gain access to everything, but once you have, with the Upgrade menu, you will be able to upgrade Adventurers, Wyrmprints, weapons and dragons, as well as craft new weapons that are stronger.
For things like weapons, dragons and Wrymprints, in the event you don’t have any upgrade materials, you can always sacrifice weapons, dragons and Wrymprints you don’t need. You’ll also be able to take advantage of Mana Circle and spend both items and Mana to unlock nodes that will allow your characters to learn new abilities, improve their stats and buy Adventurer Stories.
The latter is a story-like segment that gives players an insight into the characters they have been fortunate enough to acquire. You’ll find this feature over in Castle. In Castle, players can also visit the dragons they have bonded with and give them gifts. There are gifts you can earn by buying them with gold, which can be earned just by playing and then there are those you can earn for free.
In return, the dragons will also give you some great gifts, and as your bond grows, you’ll be able to hear their Dragon Stories. Then there is also a build mode with Castle Grounds, where players can place facilities and level them up. Some facilities will earn you gold, whereas others will boost attributes and grow Dragonfruit, which is an item that can be used to level up your dragons.
If after all that and you’re still looking to improve your team, you’ll have no choice but to combine multiple dragons and Wyrmprints, by “unbinding” them, as this will allow you to level them up further. Weapons can also by unbinded, but to strengthen your characters and add another star to their rating (5 is the max,) you will need to promote them, which requires Eldwater.
Eldwater can be earned just by playing, but it is a slog and it will be a long time before you get to promote anyone to 5* status. One way which can speed the process up however, is by summoning. Whether you’re using your real-world money or all the Wyrmite that you can earn, via completing missions, quests and daily accomplishments. By summoning, you can summon new characters, dragons and Wyrmprints.
As great as it is to get a new character, by getting someone you already have, you can get Eldwater instead and the higher star rating of the character, the more Eldwater you can get, thus speeding up how soon you can promote someone.
Honestly, I have lost count of how many times I have done a ten-fold summon already, but I have yet to pay anything and I have two great 5* dragons, one 5* character named Hawk and a couple Wyrmprints as well. I’ve also managed to get plenty of lesser starred characters and fill out my rosters quite a bit.
Not everyone has had a similar luck as myself, as some have had worse, but others have had better and their collections put mine to shame, but for a gacha game, so far I have not felt pressured to pay for anything, not even when in the game’s shop, where special bundles and items are available.
For me, that is Dragalia Lost is at its finest. Some have nothing but praise for its chosen graphical choice and killer soundtrack that is foot-tappingly infectious, but for me, the fact Dragalia Lost is a mobile game with plenty to do and what feels like minimal pressure on buying into it, makes it a winner in my book. If you chose not to summon at all though, you can earn adventurers and dragons, just by playing through the main campaign.
It also has more RPG-like gameplay going on and a similarity to Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido, what with the character designs, game menus and texts, which only makes it all the more enjoyable.
Naturally, Dragalia Lost is not without some issues as the home menu can soon get overcrowded and it is perhaps a little too “grindy” and can have the occasional performance issue, especially when playing co-op, but so far, it is certainly a game that should give Fire Emblem Heroes a run for its money, and at least perform half as well. After all, the two comic strips it have are cute, funny and like the rest of the free-to-play Dragalia Lost, don’t cost a single thing!
  Conclusion:
Cygames were already a fantastic developer in their own right, but with their knowledge, Nintendo’s talents and both parties joint expertise, Dragalia Lost is not just another run-of-the-mill JRPG, but a great one. Just because you can pay to get ahead, or just to get all the good stuff, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.
You can grind for hours on end, the means are there so you can do so without paying. Sure it gets repetitive going through it all, but what is an RPG without some grinding, especially when it’s for one of the best RPGs to grace mobile devices this year?
  THE VERDICT: 8/10
Recommended
  Should you wish to check out another of our reviews, you can do so by clicking here.
[Review] The Dragalia may be Lost but you can find a hit RPG in the making, over in the App and Google Play stores! Our full thoughts on @NintendoAmerica's & @Cygames_PR's #DragaliaLost are finally here. Developer: Cygames / Nintendo EPD Publisher: Nintendo Platform: iOS / Android Review Version: Android Version 1.0.1…
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murasaki-murasame · 4 years
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Oh boy that sure was a whole lotta stuff going on in the 1.5-year anniversary digest video, huh?
I was hoping to post some of my predictions and hopes for it beforehand but life stuff got in the way so here we are, lol.
Anyway there’s a lot I wanna talk about across the board so it’ll go under a cut.
When I saw that this digest was like 20 minutes long I figured it’d be padded out, but lol it’s actually even more dense with material than the last one we got. This really makes up for the recent drought of news and content.
Firstly, they immediately showed off Gala Alex, since she’s a given at this point and we all knew it was gonna happen. Funnily enough she actually seems like she might more or less be bait for the banner happening afterward, which also seems to be a shadow element banner.
In general Gala Alex is a weird and complicated character and I’m not sure what to make of her. At first glance she doesn’t seem super essential or game-breaking, but she has poison infliction and buff dispel, so I’d probably benefit from getting her since I don’t really have good units with that sort of utility in my shadow team yet. But I’m not gonna bother doing more than the free daily tenfold summons on this gala, since as a whole she doesn’t interest me much and I think I could live without her.
On top of her weird skill chain mechanic which I’m struggling to wrap my head around, she also introduces the chain co-ability feature, but I’ll get to that later since it’s a whole big thing.
Hopefully she’ll at least let people start accepting sword units into eKai, lol. That fight has a very open and accepting meta, unless you’re a sword unit in which case you’re fucked because there’s currently no meta shadow sword units people want for that fight.
We’re also getting two separate platinum summons for this gala that cover the past gala units, which is honestly kinda tempting to me since I still don’t have Gala Elly, but I’d just have a 1/3 chance of getting her instead of the other two gala units on her platinum summon, who I already have, so it wouldn’t be worth it.
Then there’s a whole bunch of free summons and wyrmite from new endeavors and co-op rewards getting reset. Which will be helpful in building my stash back up, but I’m probably still gonna avoid spending any resources on this gala.
I’m happy that this gala seems like one I can skip, since I went all in to get Tobias, and I didn’t want to end up regretting that.
Anyway, we also got a look at the next raid event, which will start at the end of this month. It looks like it’s another shadow element one, which just reminds me even more how much we need another wind element raid event, but it looks cool. Aldred has a fun, edgy design. I hope he’s actually worth using. As a shadow unit, he’ll at least be competing with the most stacked element in the game. It also looks like the event’s story is gonna involve the Syndicate, which we’ve actually known about via wyrmprint lore since the game came out, but they’ve never come up until now, so that’s interesting.
They also showed off the banner units, who look cool, but it’d take a lot for me to want to summon for them since I have so many good shadow units as it is. They also said it’ll be another two-part banner, which is getting really annoying.
We’re also getting a rerun of the FEH collab event, along with some sort of a new part two event for it, so that’s cool. I started playing the game at the tail end of the FEH collab originally, but I didn’t actually take part in it since I had performance anxiety about doing any of the co-op stuff, lol. So this means i’ll at least finally be able to get Alfonse.
I think the part two event is probably gonna involve more Fire Emblem characters who’ll be on their own banner, but like with the existing FE units, i don’t really have any attachment to that franchise so I probably wouldn’t be interested in pulling for them.
Though on that note, they did say that all of the four existing FEH units will get mana spirals, which might be interesting. But since I already have Euden and Xainfried at 70MC, as well as Gleo, I don’t think I’d be interested in pulling for Marth, Fjorm, or Veronica, lol. It’s at least interesting to set up this precedent, though. I guess we can assume that if Megaman ever gets rerun, he’ll get a mana spiral too.
If we get new FEH units in a part two banner for the event, I feel like they might end up being a bit underwhelming, since they probably won’t come with mana spirals built into their kits, but we’ll see how it goes.
We also got teasers for the next three main story chapters, which isn’t what I expected at all. We already knew when they’d be coming out since they’re on a fixed schedule now, but I didn’t expect actual teasers of the story content in them. Though tbh the thing that intrigues me the most is the gameplay clips of chapter 14 that involve unique maps based around the Alberian capital. I didn’t think we’d get to actually do stuff there, so that’s cool.
Also, them teasing at Leif showing up in chapter 13 is making me think that either he’ll be the next gala unit, or a welfare unit. Hopefully the latter, since he’s obviously a light sword unit and we already have Gala Euden as a light sword. If he’s a welfare unit, though, I hope he’s not super weak like Laxi.
We’re also getting the event replay feature, but sadly it seems like there won’t be any raid events in it at first, and the facility events included from the start are ones that have gotten reruns relatively recently. So that’s a bit lame. I’m glad they said that they plan on adding raid events to it, though. It looks like you can at least get the facilities from the facility events, so I hope we can also get the welfare units from raid events.
With the new version update they’re also apparently introducing a new currency called fafnir medals which can, to some degree or another, be exchanged for different materials. There’s a whole list of them, but let’s be honest here. The only one that actually matters is the gold testaments, lmao. Unless there’s a really rigid cap on how many of them you can trade for each week/month, that’ll probably be the main thing people trade for. Hopefully it can help address the need for more testaments [especially now that co-abilities are a bit more important]
Then there’s a few bits and pieces to the 1.18 update that they didn’t even mention in the digest. Like how there’ll be adjustments to daily endeavors, the addition of normal endeavors related to using skip tickets on your daily stages, and the ability to check your summon history. But the biggest deal they didn’t mention is how they’re standardizing drop rates in e/mHDTs, and adding horns to the weekly bonus chests for eHDTs. Which is basically exactly what people had been asking for.
We’re also eventually gonna get our encyclopedia feature, which will be nice, especially since it apparently comes with rewards based on how much stuff you have. Which will probably provide a huge batch of rewards to old players right off the bat.
They also showed off two more Agito bosses, who will probably be the next two ones. They didn’t say which would come out next, exactly, but we at least got their names and full designs, which also spells out what elements they are. I can’t actually remember their names at the moment, but the Sylvan lady is water, while the twins are flame. Since wind units have been getting some attention lately, I think the Sylvan lady will be next, and then the flame twins afterward, but we’ll see. One way or another I think the final Agito is gonna be the shadow element one. Which is a bit lame, since my light team really needs a boost. Oh well.
Oh, and they also teased at the Agito, or at least Volk, being formally introduced in chapter 14 of the main campaign, so that’s interesting.
And of course one of the biggest things in this whole update is the huge changes to co-abilities in general. Chain co-abilities are the main thing, but I’m also really intrigued by how in co-op matches, you’ll now take on the effects of your own team’s co-abilities, rather than the co-abilities of the main units your team-mates are using. On the one hand it means you can more comfortably run multiple units of the same weapon type in co-op without feeling like it’s a waste, but I feel like it’s also gonna introduce new ways to cheese some fights, like how 4-Gleo comps can now benefit from stuff like defensive co-abilities from AI units. I think that sort of situation was an intentional choice on Cygames’ part, though. It seems like their way of helping to make end-game content easier and more accessible. It also means that you have to depend less on your team-mates if you need stuff like defensive coabilities to survive an opening blast or something. So you can control that yourself and not worry about what co-op room you end up in.
But the real star of the show, whether or not it ends up being more game-changing than the change to how co-abilities are applied in general, is the chain co-ability feature. Which basically just seems to be a straight up second co-ability that every unit gets, but with the unique quality that they can stack with each other. I don’t actually know how often you’d bother stacking them, though. I looked through all the units I own and what chain co-abilities they have, and it seems like in each element, it’s usually units of the same weapon type that have overlapping chain co-abilities [like Mitsuhide and Fritz getting combo time]. So most of the time I don’t think you’d bother. It also looks like they’re kinda under-tuned, stat-wise, probably to compensate for them being stackable, so I think they might ultimately not be a huge deal, but hey, it’s just a straight up bonus set of stats on top of everything else, lol.
It’s a bit overwhelming since literally EVERY character has a chain co-ability now, and there’s way more variety in them than with regular co-abilities, but there are a few that stick out to me.
-Water seems to be the only element with units that have buff time chain co-abilities, from what I can tell, with Renee, S-Estelle, and Cibella having it. I think this might make S-Estelle a more valued AI team-mate for water teams, since buff time is a pretty big deal, and she also brings the skill damage coability.
-Light seems like one of the main cases where you might stack chain co-abilities, since S-Luca, Annelie, and Fritz have the same one that gives a strength buff whenever you get an energy stack [with a cooldown]. Which I think has a lot of potential, depending on how exactly it works.
-On a similar note, Lucretia has one that gives her a chance to get inspiration stacks when she gets energy stacks [I forget if it applies to just her or the whole team, though], which is interesting. I had a feeling they’d start adding inspiration mechanics to light to complement the amount of energy mechanics going on with them.
-OG Xainfried gets Dragon Claws VI, which seems like it’ll probably be a pretty huge deal for him. Pipple also gets about 18% dragon haste when he’s maxed out, which seems like it’d complement really nicely with Xainfried’s kit.
-Mitsuhide and Fritz’s combo time chain co-ability is gonna be REALLY nice for Gala Luca, since he kinda struggles to keep a high combo, but part of his kit relies on it.
-There’s a whole lot of units who get defensive chain co-abilities which will probably help people get by in HDTs even more. Including units with offensive co-abilities like Mikoto and Valerio.
All in all it seems like a really overwhelming and potentially game-changing mechanic. I also think it’s gonna be just about impossible to properly reflect the implications of it in the DPS sims, lol. This introduces way too many variables. And even then, the DPS sims won’t account for any of the more defensive ones, which have their own value.
Since the chain co-abilities seem to be tied to the regular co-abilities with how they get upgraded, it sounds like this is gonna incentivize getting more people’s co-ability nodes, which will also involve more use of testaments.
The chain co-abilities are one thing, but there’s also some interesting uses for how you benefit from your own AI members’ co-abilities in co-op. Mainly for characters with unique co-abilities like Tobias, H-Mym, and V-Melody. I think Ezelith is gonna basically always want to have an H-Mym on her team, Lin You is gonna want V-Melody on her team, and any wind buffer other than Tobias is gonna want a Tobias on the team to give them more buff-time.
Oh, and I almost forgot that they also casually mentioned that they’re gonna be bringing back defensive battle event types in the future. They didn’t go into much detail about it, but I assume it means that we’ll get more random events once in a while with the same sort of format as the FEH one. Hopefully that’d help alleviate the feeling of stagnation that comes with constantly alternating between raid and facility events endlessly. Since I didn’t actually participate in the FEH event I don’t know what that whole event type entails, though.
I’m probably forgetting lots of stuff they talked about, but they talked about a LOT of stuff, lol. It’s hard to keep track of it all. I wasn’t expecting such a substantial update for the 1.5-year anniversary, but I’m happy with it.
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murasaki-murasame · 4 years
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A whole buncha shit went down in Chapter 12 today and we got a new Chimera fight to begin shaking up the shadow meta in preparation for the new mana spiral batch and the new Agito fight, but like 90% of my brainpower is currently being spent thinking about how the new influx of wyrmite rewards let me do another tenfold on the Valentine’s banner, which finally got me Epimetheus.
But I still have some thoughts on the new chapter so I’m gonna put them under a cut because of spoilers
I’m feeling extremely vindicated in my choice to dream summon Laranoa, since chapter 12 ended up having flame enemies, and she even showed up in the story, which is like the last thing I saw coming.
Even though my water team is probably my weakest one overall, I didn’t actually have too much difficulty with anything up until the last couple of Very Hard battles, which I wasn’t able to do, and probably won’t be able to for a while.
I still think that the higher difficulty main campaign maps are really fun and well-balanced, though. It’s pretty rare to get challenging content based around dealing with waves of mob enemies. It really forces you to play differently, especially in Very Hard where every enemy hits super hard.
And on the note of the main bosses in the chapter, I’m still wondering if the whole deal with the cube bosses is actually gonna lead somewhere. Thus far they’re just this giant question-mark with no real in-universe explanation or acknowledgement, and their whole sci-fi vibe and the cryptic references to space probes just feels like the exact opposite of how the rest of the game is. It’s possible that they’re just there to be challenging boss fights with no real context behind them, but I kinda hope something happens with them. Maybe once we’ve gotten one for each element.
Story-wise this chapter was shorter and a bit less eventful than I expected, but it was still really fun. It really feels like things are heating up now. Especially with how it ended, it really feels like the first half of a two-chapter story arc, so that’s probably why it felt kinda brief. It definitely raised a lot of interesting questions that’ll probably get addressed in the next chapter.
First of all, the big elephant in the room is the reveal that apparently we’re going to see the fifth heir in the next chapter, which just kinda came out of nowhere, lol. I really thought they’d be a mystery for longer than this.
It’s not like there’s anything to go on one way or another, but I kinda hope that the fifth heir is that wyrmclan leader we saw that looks a whole lot like Euden. But who knows.
They’re still a huge mystery, but the stuff with Phares in this chapter makes me think that the fifth heir is somehow involved in the whole concept of black mana and how it corrupts dragons, if we’re meant to assume that Phares showing up with the void dragons at the end of the chapter was related to him getting help from the fifth heir. Which might explain why Chelle and Leonidas seemed genuinely freaked out at the idea of Phares working with their mystery sibling. I don’t think the idea of black mana has been introduced or explored at all outside of the descriptions of the void bosses, so it’ll be cool if it gets properly explored soon.
And on that note, I really wasn’t expecting this chapter to provide an actual in-universe explanation for stuff like the void dragons and the IO bosses. It’s not a huge deal, but it’s nice that the void dragons aren’t just in their own little weird pocket of ambiguous canon.
It’s kinda weird to see the main story basically introduce the concept of void battles when those have been in the game forever, but it’s nice to see them finally addressing it, lol.
The whole deal with Leonidas talking about ‘dracoshifting’ is also totally a hint at a future game mechanic, isn’t it? People have been wondering for a while now if there’s going to be some sort of revamp to dragons as a mechanic to basically rebalance them according to the current needs of the endgame meta, and I could totally see some variation of what Leonidas did to Mars being used to explain a new mechanic about buffing existing dragons. I imagine that if we get to do it, we’d do it in a more humane way than Leonidas, but still.
I’ve been thinking ever since they introduced mana spirals for adventurers that dragons should probably get something like that to make them better, and I could see this basically being how they do it. I dunno exactly how they’d do it, but maybe it’ll be like promoting dragons to make them stronger and giving them a new sci-fi design like Mars has. There’s definitely a lot of old dragons that need some sort of buff to make them more relevant. I’d want it to be slowly rolled out for specific dragons that need it, though, like with mana spirals.
Mainly I think that the 60% strength dragons probably need a buff since we’re starting to get conditional 80% strength dragons, but there’s also other relatively weak 5-star dragons like Prometheus, Takemikazuchi, Nidhogg, etc, that could use a buff.
This also might be a good way for them to make it worthwhile to actually be shapeshifted for a while, instead of just using the dragon to use a single skill or to tank a hit. At the moment they’re basically all weaker than if you weren’t shapeshifted, but maybe this sort of buff would also lead to their shapeshifted forms being way better. Which would at least be great for characters like Xainfried, Mym, Lathna, etc.
I’m also kinda wondering now if this chapter might be setting up for Leonidas joining us and being playable eventually. It kinda feels like that’s what they’re setting up, but honestly I kinda hate all of Euden’s siblings and I don’t really want to see any of them become our allies, lol. Also Leonidas would probably just be a flame sword, and we really don’t need more of them.
On a similar note I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re probably getting Gala Alex next month. I dunno if I’ll go out of my way to save for her, but we’ll see. I’m curious to see what her gala alt would play like, though, especially if she’s still a shadow unit. There’s just a whole lot of competition in shadow at the moment. Either way, I think she’ll probably end up being a sword. Shadow doesn’t really have any noteworthy sword units at the moment, so that’d be nice.
Once we get into March I might start saving for her, but for now I’m probably gonna put some resources into the new dragon banner, since all of the featured ones really interest me [especially Apollo since I don’t have him yet], and I just got Epimetheus so now I’m done with the Valentine’s banner.
That also reminds me that at this point it’s basically confirmed that both Epimetheus and the three old Valentine’s adventurers are permanent now, which is really interesting. I guess this means that later this year they’ll make the old Halloween and Christmas units permanent, too. That’d be a nice way to keep introducing new holiday units without it getting bloated and hard to manage. And honestly most of the older holiday units aren’t particularly good anymore, so there’s no real harm in making them permanent. RIP in pieces to all the people who whaled for V-Hilde, though, lol. Maybe now that she’s permanent she has a chance of getting a mana spiral to make her better.
Anyway, I’ve felt a little let down by some of the recent story chapters, but I ended up really liking this one. Now I’m excited to see what reveals and developments the next chapter brings.
I’m also still extremely hyped about the upcoming shadow mana spiral batch, and the new Agito fight. I’m still clinging onto my pipe dream wish of them improving Norwin by making him more like V-Addis or Natalie. I’ve actually been thinking some more about the different ways that could go [even after I made a whole post about it lmao], and I think it’d be interesting if in addition to adding an enmity effect to his S1, they added an effect to his S2 where he takes non-lethal damage relative to the amount of damage he does to the enemy with the skill, as a way to manually get him down to low health. So I guess in that case he’d be more like a shadow version of Chelsea, which could be fun. I also think there’s a lot of interesting things they could do with him by, say, adding a team health regen effect to his Blind = Team Strength ability. But who knows. I just want him to get some special attention and become genuinely good because I really love him, lol. Though in general I like the idea of them using mana spiral upgrades to basically give certain characters a whole different play-style. Sorta like how Karl can now be used more or less as a buffer, but that has more to do with D-Rathalos than Karl’s mana spiral. It’s still an interesting way to give older units a niche in the meta.
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murasaki-murasame · 4 years
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The next update for DL has a whole bunch of extremely interesting stuff going on in it, and I have a whole bunch of thoughts about it, lol.
This is gonna get long so I’ll put it under a cut.
The skill share system is the huge deal that I have the most thoughts on, so I’ll save that for last and talk about the rest of the version update, and other upcoming content first.
Even aside from the version update stuff, we got an official announcement for the chapter 13 interlude that’ll come out in a few days. It didn’t exactly say much, but it does show that the Agito bosses are apparently going to show up in it. We knew already that they’ll show up in chapter 14, so this is probably just to set up for that, but it’s still exciting. At the moment they’re all kinda boring as characters, so I hope them actually being part of the main story will make them more interesting.
Nothing’s been said about it yet, but I’m also still thinking that the gala will start at the same time, since I think it’ll be right when the current event ends. The current banner’s going to go until the end of the month, but there’s still gonna be a week between the current event ending and the next one starting, so I think we’ll get the gala to fill that gap, and the new event will just have it’s own banner to go with it once the gala ends.
I’m also still in the camp of wanting the new gala unit to be Leif. I’ve already got nearly 450 summons saved up for him, so I have a lot of expectations riding on this, lol. If it ends up being Leonidas or something I might just straight up skip the entire gala out of spite. I already skipped Gala Mars, so skipping Gala Leonidas would be pretty easy at this point, if it comes to that.
Even though part of why I don’t want Gala Leonidas to be a thing is because I think he’d just be another flame sword, but it’s more about how he looks like he’d be another DPS-oriented flame sword, like all the other ones we have. I actually want Gala Leif to be a flame sword, but I specifically want him to be a support-oriented flame sword, so he’d fill a different role than the other flame swords we have. Flame really needs more variety with it’s support units, and I’m still a bit wary that the skill share system will lead to healers like H-Lowen getting shunned, so getting a flame sword who can substitute for him would be nice.
Anyway, we found out from the version update post that around the middle of next month we’ll see the first Onslaught Event, which seems to be the solo-focused event type they teased at earlier. I’m assuming it’s the one they mentioned that’s separate to defensive events like the FEH stuff. I think it’ll probably be a reworked version of the Coliseum from the FEH2 event, which I think would be really fun. Mostly I’m curious to see if it ends up being the type of event that gives us a free character, since that’s always nice.
On that sort of note, I’m still really hoping the upcoming new raid event at the end of the month is a new wind element one. We desperately need another one if only so that we don’t have to deal with Astral Valfarre this often, lol.
As for the version update itself, I’m really interested to see how the new royal regimen endeavors pan out. Mostly because it might give me an influx of wyrmite and summon vouchers in time for the gala. At the very least it looks like a massively expanded version of the jumpstart endeavors, and from what little we’ve seen of it, it’ll at least give a tenfold voucher and a 5-star adventurer voucher. But since the 5-star voucher seems to be the reward for completing 54 endeavors, there might be a whole bunch of other rewards too.
I’m at least hoping all the rewards will apply retroactively so veterans like me don’t miss out on stuff, but they said that people who’ve already started the game can obtain the rewards, so I hope that means everyone can.
Aside from the skill share thing, there’s also other big balance changes that’ll be done in this update, like AI adventurers taking less damage, HDT opening blasts getting nerfed, various changes to different weapon combos, and so on. It’ll all depend on exactly how the numbers pan out, but this could at least make it WAY easier to solo HDTs, and maybe also the Agito bosses.
I’m glad that they’re addressing the fact that HDT opening blasts are an overly punishing and outdated mechanic that can already be shut down with certain characters. Some people won’t like the change, but anything that makes those fights more plausible to solo would be great. In particular I’ve never even touched HZD since I’ve never really had a reason to, but I still want to get the shadow fafnir facility, and HZD himself as a dragon, so it’d be nice to be able to grind it solo.
Since they’re universally going to lower the damage AI characters take, I think it’ll have an impact on basically every fight in the game, so that might changes things up a lot. Especially with the later levels of Mercurial Gauntlet where part of the challenge is being able to do enough damage to kill him without making yourself too fragile to survive.
I think the weapon combo changes aren’t really going to impact anyone’s damage output much, and will be more of an aesthetic sort of change in the long run, but I feel iffy about them removing the jump animation from axe combos, since I’m so used to charging my force strike mid-jump to save time. But removing the jump animation from sword and dagger combos will make those weapon types way more convenient to play.
The real star of the show here is the skill share feature though, lol. I’m still skeptical about how much of an impact it’ll have in the long run since it all depends on how many limits they put in place for it, but it’s still exciting, and I have a lot of speculation about it.
Firstly, one thing I haven’t seen discussed is the implication that not only will different skills have different ‘costs’, different characters might have different caps on how many skill points worth of skills they can equip. They shows that Euden has a cap of 10, but some characters might have a lower or higher cap, and I think that might really dictate a lot of how this actually works out in the end. The way I hope it works is that stronger units have a smaller cap so they have more limitations on what skills they can equip, while weaker units have a higher cap, so they have more freedom to equip two really good skills.
Just as a fairly severe example, if we assume that all buff skills have a cost of 6 like Elly’s S1 does, maybe super overpowered units like Gala Cleo will have a cap of 5, so they’re straight up unable to equip any buff skills, and might even only have room for one skill to begin with. Just as an example of how to balance it so that the already powerful units can’t just equip two really powerful additional skills to get even stronger. And on the other hand, maybe weaker units could have a cap of 12 or so, which means they could equip two 6-point buff skills, which could be a real game-changer, and let those units enter the meta.
That’s basically the main reason why I don’t think it’s a good idea to get too carried away with trying to work out the numbers for if you gave Gala Cleo two buff skills or whatever, since they might intentionally shut down those situations from the start.
They’ve also said that some skills won’t be available to equip at all, which will probably apply to really unique and potentially broken skills like Grace’s S1, which would obviously be way too game-breaking if you paired it with heal skills. Going by the image they posted, I think they might only let you equip a character’s first skill, and not their second, which would eliminate a lot of possibilities. But it’d make sense to just do a blanket ban on equipping S2s, since those tend to be where the really unique mechanics and buffs go. For example, Hawk and Nefaria’s S2s that alter their force-strikes, Gala Luca’s S2 that gives a huge crit damage buff, Chelsea/V-Addis/Natalie’s S2s that lower their health and give them big buffs, etc etc.
If we assume that all S2s, and Grace’s S1, will be banned, I think the other banned skills would probably be skills that inflict defense debuffs, or major status effects like bog. Those are the other types of skills I can think of that could be way too powerful if used in the right way.
It’s interesting to note, though, that aside from the cost system, there doesn’t seem to be major restrictions in what types of skills you can equip. Like, it doesn’t seem to be restricted by element or weapon type, and Euden at least has access to damaging skills, buffs, and heals. There’s also a few examples we can see from the teaser image of skills that inflict ‘regular’ status effects, like Luca and Joe’s S1s. One really notable example is that Ranzal’s S1 is also available, and if we can use the mana spiral version of it, then that means that you can have convenient access to a buff dispel move, since it’s one of the few moves that had dispel in it that’s not tied to the adventurer’s ability.
The teaser image also gives us an idea of what costs different types of skills will have, which has some interesting implications. Most skills seem to hover around 4-5 points, which makes sense if we assume that 10 is gonna be the average limit, but the ones that are lower or higher than that stand out. We have Ranzal, Cleo, Cibella, and Zardin with skills that have a cost of 3, while Elly and Joe’s skills have a cost of 6. I can see why Elly’s skill has a high cost since it’s a universal team strength buff, but it’s interesting that Joe’s skill has a high cost as well, since it’s just an attacking skill that inflicts burn. It makes me wonder if skills that inflict burn/paralysis/poison/frostbite will have a high cost, probably to make it hard or impossible to equip two at once, but I don’t think it’d be a big deal to equip two of them at once, since if anything it’s a bad thing to have too many sources of status afflictions. Luca’s skill also has a slightly lower cost of 5, which makes me wonder why it’s different to Joe’s. I assume it just implies that story characters will have a lower cost for their skills, to make them easier to equip. Which also makes sense if you look at how Ranzal’s S1 has a cost of 3 compared to other damaging skills in the image having a cost of 5, and Cleo’s S1 having a cost of 3 compared to other heals that have a cost of 4 or 5.
Just as a side-note, I took a look at the wiki to remind myself what Laxi’s S1 does, since hers will also be available even if it wasn’t shown in this image, and lmao I forgot that it’s literally one of the worst damaging skills in the entire game. It’s base damage mods are insanely low, and if you can’t use S2 skills at all, then you won’t even be able to make use of the fact that it does double the amount of hits while her S2 is active. Which reminds me that there might be a lot of units who’s skills just aren’t worth using because they’re buffed by their second skills, on top of all of the adventurers who have abilities that add effects to their S1, like how you need to have Gala Cleo’s abilities to be able to use her force strike buff zone after using her S1.
In general I think that the only skills anyone will want to use in the first place will be buffs and heals, with damaging skills only being worth it if they do something unique like dispelling buffs, or inflicting a debuff or status effect. A team strength buff would have way more impact on overall team DPS than a single damaging skill in general, but maybe I’m just forgetting some uniquely powerful S1 someone has that isn’t reliant on one of their abilities or their S2.
I’m kinda worried that the meta will shift even more towards 4DPS comps that have at least one unit with a heal. It wouldn’t really change things much from how they are now, but it might push H-Lowen out of the flame meta, which would suck. At least his HP increase effect is on his S2, so he’ll probably still have that going for him, but still.
Realistically this would probably lead more towards the sort of thing we see in the wind meta with Tobias/Noelle/DY-Xainfried using Freyja and acting as a substitute healer of sorts, but for all elements, and without relying on dragon skills. So it’s be more along the lines of the ‘healer role’ being diversified, but it still probably means that most staff units will be shunned because the only thing they do is heal, so they’d probably be invalidated by a buffer who brings at least one heal skill.
I’m hoping that, on the flip-side, this will also lead to healers being able to bring buff skills, and thus leading them to effectively doing the same thing as buffers who bring heal skills. For example, if H-Lowen used Emma’s S1, and Emma used H-Lowen’s S1, then the only difference between them would be their S2s, and even those are fairly similar, since Emma has a team defense buff, and H-Lowen has a heal mixed with an HP buff. So they’d do slightly different things, but be similar enough that, hopefully, healers like H-Lowen could do both buffing and healing without just being shunned by the meta.
Most buffers have buff time passives going for them, which probably makes them better, but hopefully not to the degree that they just invalidate healers entirely.
Depending on how this plays out, it could lead to some really interesting possibilities with having characters focus on different things depending on what skills they have equipped. Like if you wanted to make Heinwald into more of a healer, or more of a DPS unit. 
One thing to keep in mind is that staff units also have really high SP gain per attack, which might mean that they could get buff skills off substantially faster than a regular buff unit, which could at least make up for not having a buff time passive. But we’ll see if they do anything to adjust SP costs for skills to take that into account.
Even if heal skills get left to dedicated support units like Tobias, DPS units will probably still end up equipping buff skills since they should be more powerful than a damaging skill, so I can’t help but wonder just how drastically it’s going to impact the game if you have four units with access to team strength buffs, lol. I feel like that might just skyrocket the potential team DPS you can achieve, which might really trivialize certain fights in co-op. Which may or may not be a good thing.
And THEN there’s the whole topic of how on top of you needing to 50MC a unit and get them to level 80, you need to use a new type of item to actually make a skill available to be equipped, and it looks like that type of item will just be given out through events and through the shop [which probably refers to real money packs]. So basically I think everyone should just brace themselves for only being able to afford to unlock one or two skills per element. I don’t really think that’s a huge deal though, since you only have the two skill share slots to work with in the first place. Elly’s S1 is also non-elemental and immediately available to use, so everyone will have access to one good buff skill, and Cleo’s heal is also going to be immediately available if you need a heal skill. Ranzal’s S1 is also gonna be free, if you need the buff dispel from it. So there’s already some pretty good options to work with without needing to spend any resources.
In general the main skills people will want to unlock would be their element’s strength buffer if they don’t go for Elly’s S1, a defense buff, and a heal. And since defense buffs and heals aren’t element-locked, you can just use someone like Pipple or Patia in any element for their defense buffs, and someone like OG Cleo for heals. In terms of raw healing power I think the top units would probably be N-Aeleen and S-Verica, and H-Lowen provides both a heal and a defense buff. There’s also Grace but I’m almost certain her S1 will be automatically banned.
There’s various units who have team strength buffs on their S1s via skill shift mechanics, but I don’t think those would be worth using just for the strength buffs. You’d be better off just using a regular buff.
Strength and defense debuffs have a lot of potential to be worth using, especially in raid content, but for that exact reason I think some/all of those types of skills might also be banned.
There’s also the question of if it’ll be worth replacing an Agito weapon skill with a shared skill, which might also be a bit of a problem, but unless you need the alternating defensive buffs from them, I think a team strength buff would be better than even the shadow Agito weapon’s self-only attack rate buff.
Anyway this was far too many words to write about an entire game mechanic that we have vague and incomplete information about, lmao.
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murasaki-murasame · 5 years
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Lots of stuff’s been happening lately in Dragalia Lost lately, and I’ve also been trying to get into other gacha games on the side, so I suppose it’s time for another round of gacha game liveblogging, lol.
I ended up spending way too many resources on the second summer banner and the Valentines rerun, considering how little interest I had for the units in either of them aside from Summer Luca, but at least it all paid off with me getting some absurd luck on the current wind banner. I somehow managed to get all three of the new banner units in a single tenfold summon after raising my pity rate once, so that’s neat. I ended up pushing my luck and spending another tenfold voucher which got be absolutely nothing though, so I guess that was just the universe’s way of telling me not to get cocky. So now I’m just saving for the anniversary. I’m really tempted by Lin You being on rate-up at the moment since I really want her, but at this point I’ll just dream summon her for the anniversary so I’m just gonna skip this banner now that I have the new units on it.
I did manage to at least get Summer Luca, Summer Cleo, Pop-Star Siren, Valentines Orion, and Valentines Ezelith across the two previous banners, but in hindsight I really should have just quit after getting Luca. Oh well, lol. Funnily enough I ended up entirely skipping the dragon showcase [outside of free daily summons], since even though it was way better value than the Valentines rerun, I just have no real interest in pulling dupes of 5-star dragons I already have.
It also turned out I was totally right about us getting a Su Fang event rerun to start off September, so now I have my incredibly good wind dagger boi promoted to 5 stars with 45 mana nodes. The fact that I managed to get Vayu, and that we got a dagger skill damage wyrmprint, make me feel even better about investing in him. I’m also happy to get Peng Lai since he’s at least somewhat of an upgrade over Mercury who’s currently the only good water HP dragon I have.
Once the next MG treasure trove reward batch comes in, I’m probably gonna promote Noelle since she seems really good for Water MG. Which is good since my wind team is kinda lacking in terms of DPS, although the fact that I also have Victor now helps that a lot. I’m really curious to see if we get more support units like this that buff teammates of a certain element type. It’s a cool way to have support units that are really strong without being the absolute best unit to use for every single team.
I thought we were gonna get a Wu Kong banner here to go with the Su Fang rerun, but I at least ended up being right about it being a wind banner in general, and we got a 5-star wind blade and 4-star wind wand, which were the other unit types I was expecting to go with Wu Kong since they were some of the biggest gaps in the wind roster. At this point I can only assume that they might be planning a raid event or something where Wu Kong’s the welfare unit. But who even knows. Maybe they’ll do a banner for him at some random point down the road.
We’re also getting closer and closer to the anniversary, and we’re slowly starting to get news about what to expect from this month in general. I really wish we had more specific info about what the anniversary will bring so that I know what I’m saving for in the first place, but oh well. At the very least the gala’s always a good thing to save for, so that’s my fallback option if nothing between now and then interests me.
Thankfully we at least know now that we’re getting Chapter 10, HZD, and Void Nidhogg this month, so that’s neat. After how we didn’t get Void Nidhogg last week I thought we wouldn’t be getting HZD this month, but I guess this isn’t gonna be like HJP where we got the respective void battle before it came out. I did always think it’d make the most sense to release HZD for the anniversary to cap off the game’s first year, though, so this makes sense.
I’m really curious to see what Chapter 10 brings, with how much they’re hyping it up. Plus they dropped a not so subtle hint at the fact that they’re going to be ‘adding new summonable adventurers’ in the same timeframe as Chapter 10′s release. They typically don’t just randomly go ‘we’re gonna have another summon banner soon’ without giving some details about what it’ll be, so I think they’re intentionally keeping it a bit of a secret, but the timing makes it seem like it’ll be related to Chapter 10. And since they mentioned the chapter will involve the siblings coming into contact with each other, I guess it’ll probably be a banner with some of them on it. Which would [thankfully] be an easy skip for me since I’m not really interested in any of them as characters, and I’m not really in dire need to chase after new units just because they might be really powerful. Either way, if we get a banner like that next, I think the most likely candidates would probably be Chelle, Zethia, and maybe Emile or Valyx. They’re at least the ones that are more aligned with Euden so it’d make sense for them to be the first ones of the batch we can summon. Though I could see Zethia being the gala unit.
I wonder if they’d make a banner like that limited or not, especially when the anniversary events haven’t even kicked off yet. I feel like it’d end up just being massive bait if they make it limited, lol. But it also might be weird in it’s own way to make them regularly summonable units.
Since the anniversary is on the 27th, and that’ll probably be when the gala starts, I guess this might end up being the only banner between now and then, if it starts right after this banner ends and goes for about two weeks, but there might be another banner after it before the gala. I think it’d make sense if we get a banner associated with an upcoming anniversary event, which might not start until about a week or so after Chapter 10 comes out. They mentioned that there’ll be a pre-anniversary log-in bonus/limited endeavor campaign starting on the 19th, so I think that might be when the hypothetical ‘anniversary event’ starts, so I could see the next banner maybe running until then, with there also being a bit of a downtime week between the Su Fang rerun and the anniversary event. Though for all we know they might do a void endeavor week then and spend the entire second half of September on anniversary stuff. At least that way we’d get Void Nidhogg before HZD, which would be convenient. And it’d be better than getting no new events aside from Chapter 10 from between the current event ending and the anniversary stuff starting.
We’re also getting HZD on the same day that the pre-anniversary stuff starts, so that’s interesting. I don’t think we’d get any limited endeavors related to that, though, since I don’t think they’ve done that sorta thing with the previous high dragon trials.
I think the pre-anniversary campaign will be along the lines of the half-year anniversary one, and so we might get like 2k+ wyrmite from it, but I also have a feeling that we’ll get daily free tenfold summons. A week seems like a fitting length for that sort of thing to run for, and it seems like it’s a pretty common thing for gachas to do for their anniversaries. Who knows what else we might get. I think it’d be neat if they finally update the 5-star voucher pool and give us one for free, though. Something like a free dream summon is possible, but I think a free 5-star voucher would be more realistic.
It’s worth noting that they specifically laid out the fact that we’re getting astral raid battles for the entire month after the current raid event ends, which should mean that there won’t be any other raid events this month. So if we get some sort of special anniversary event, I think it’ll probably be the same type of event as the FEH one, since a facility event would be kinda . . . boring at this point. I also never actually played the FEH event even though I started playing during it, so it’d be fun to try out that whole gamemode for the first time.
My main bet for the anniversary event and it’s associated banner is that it’ll be either a collab event with something like Granblue Fantasy, or they might focus more on DL itself and have a banner with characters like Leif and Patia. Or we might finally get DAOKO as a unit. Who knows. I feel like a GBF collab of some sort is basically inevitable, but they might not do it for the anniversary. I think the only other collab event that’d make sense for the anniversary at this point would be Fire Emblem Three Houses, since we’ve already gotten one FE collab event. And Three Houses’ whole set-up works nicely with the idea of having a banner with three featured units on it.
One way or another I think we’ll get some sort of special limited banner to go along with the anniversary event, and on top of that we’d probably get a welfare unit like we did for the FEH event. Which would probably be the GBF/Three Houses protagonist if it’s a collab with one of those games, or it might be Leif if it’s a non-collab event.
I’m also hoping that we get a new story unit from Chapter 10, but that might be pushing it a bit. But if we do, I assume it’d probably be Leif, Zethia, or some sort of Euden alt.
Anyway, aside from all the DL stuff, I’ve also been trying over the last few weeks to get into some other gacha games. Not because I’m getting bored of DL or anything, but just because I feel like it. But it’s been a bit of a rocky experience, lol.
I’m probably going to eventually get into GBF, but I’m at least waiting until some sort of gala event since those seem to be the best times to start a new account. I’m a little put off by how grind-y it apparently is, but I don’t care too much about PVP competitiveness so it might be fine.
I was thinking about maybe checking out GrandChase, but that doesn’t work on my phone apparently, and DL’s taking up all the space on my tablet, so unless I wanna emulate it [which I don’t], I’m just gonna put that one off for the foreseeable future. But at this point there’s other options that interest me more.
I really like the sound of Another Eden, since it seems to basically just be a traditional JRPG that happens to have a gacha attached to it, and it seems to have very limited micro-transactions, but I’ve heard it’s getting a Switch port Eventually [tm] so I’m just gonna sit back and wait for that to come out. It does sound like my sorta thing, though.
But the first gacha game out of the whole list I tried to get into, and the one that ended up disappointing me the most, was Food Fantasy. Oh boy, that sure is a gacha game alright. It’s the sort of game that I WANT to love, since it has really great character designs, art, and music, but oh boy it definitely seems like an example of aggressively-monetized Chinese gacha games. Basically every single gameplay mechanic can be sped up and made more convenient with premium currency [which is pretty slow to grind out for F2P players], and it feels like basically everything is designed around the assumption that you’re pretty much a whale who’s always gonna have the premium currency to spend on stuff like event items and stamina refreshes.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been doing research into the game’s history and getting more and more put off by seeing how many events it has that basically boil down to ‘spend real-life money to get stuff’, which is probably my most hated type of event to have in a gacha game. But it seems to happen super often in this game. I think the final straw that’s gonna make me delete the game entirely is how a new summon banner event started where the only way to pull on it is to spend real-life money on event items from the store. Of which there’s ten bundles that are each worth about $10 USD. Which adds up pretty quickly, lol.
Then there’s the fact that the version of the game I’m playing had apparently already gone through most of the limited banner units I would have been interested in pulling for, and since we’re like 1-2 full years behind the Chinese server, I have a very good idea of what to expect for the distant future of the game, and basically none of it interests me, and it seems to actually get more and more aggressive with it’s monetized events as it goes on. So that sucks.
I know that there’s apparently a whole cultural divide going on here and that basically every Chinese-made gacha game is SUPER heavily P2W, but oh boy it sure is off-putting to try and play one if you’re not interested in spending money. Which is a shame since I think if the game had been made by, well, a completely different company with a completely different design philosophy, I could have really liked it. But alas.
Also the main gameplay loop related to the restaurant sim is neat in theory, but oh boy it sure is a whole bunch of tedious micro-management in practice where you’re expected to play the game at fairly specific time intervals to be properly efficient.
This is definitely the sorta situation where I only feel this negatively toward it because there’s parts of it that I really like, and it could have been really fun if it was just designed differently. If it was something I entirely disliked I’d just ignore it and not care, lol. But it always hurts a bit when it’s something that you think has potential, and which actually appeals to you in a lot of ways. But then it does everything in it’s power to drive you away.
I’d totally be all over an anime adaptation if they make one of it, though. The character designs and music would make it entirely worth it. And even though the story is incredibly barebones, apparently there’s gonna be some sort of complete revamp to it eventually so maybe that’ll make it interesting.
I can’t remember if I talked about this previously, but I also tried Crash Fever twice and ended up deleting it both times, and I don’t think I’m gonna try it a third time. The core gameplay is fun enough, but there’s like no real story to feel immersed in, and the game’s visual aesthetic is so garish and intense that it’s actually kinda painful to look at for more than like ten minutes at a time. I actually like the character designs, but most of them are so overdesigned that you can barely tell what the heck’s going on with them, and overall the game is just filled with bright flashing lights and screen transition effects. On paper it sounds appealing enough that the game’s aesthetic is ‘Alice in Wonderland-themed virtual space with lots of neon colours’, but in practice it’s just Too Much.
Then there’s a whole list of gacha games that I’m aware of but which either aren’t released in my region or aren’t available on any of my devices, like F/GO, Magia Record, etc. But none of them really interest me much so it’s not a big deal. There’s also Pokemon Masters which I think is globally available but isn’t available on any of my devices [which I’ve heard is more a matter of your devices’s technical specs than your region], but from what I’ve heard that’s not really a big loss. It sounds like a bit of a shallow cash-grab all around.
Oh and there’s also Fire Emblem Heroes but I’m not really interested in that since I can just get Three Houses once I get my Switch soon.
Thankfully I ended up finding King’s Raid, which I might actually stick with for now, which is a relief. It’ll be nice when I get an upgraded phone since my current one feels like it’s screen is a little too small to comfortably play it, and it’s kinda laggy, but it’s not unplayable or anything.
Mostly I just really like the character designs, and how F2P-friendly the hero collection system is, since the gacha mechanics are only for items, and you can just directly buy heroes with in-game currency you can slowly grind up, and you can slowly work at befriending and recruiting units from an inn. Which is a neat system for a game like this. I also like that basically all of the main NPCs in the story are all characters you can eventually obtain one way or another. I really wish more games like this did that, since they tend to have such cool designs that are wasted on characters you’ll never be able to play as.
I might be in the minority on this one, but I also really like gacha games like this and Dragalia Lost that use 3D character models in-game, although DL’s art-style in general is more bright and cartoonish, while King’s Raid is closer to something like a modern Tales game, in terms of being more realistic in terms of colour schemes and body proportions, but still anime-y all around. I like both of them for different reasons. Though I also really like how KR has lots of aesthetic customization options, with how you can buy accessories and costumes for your characters with in-game currency that you can mix and match [which also reminds me of modern Tales games, lol], and each unit gets an upgraded outfit as you ascend them.
Also it’s one of the relatively few gacha games I’ve seen that has a fairly even balance between attractive male and female character designs. Which is always appreciated.
Finally, I think I might also try out Epic Seven since I’ve heard good things about it, at least now that I’m way beyond my limit of patience with Food Fantasy and I’m probably gonna delete it soon once and for all. But I don’t know if I’d want to bother playing it in addition to King’s Raid, honestly. And tbh I’m a lot less interested in the character designs and animation style as a lot of people are. It’s fine, but it leans too much toward the bland mid-ground of anime-y character designs that don’t really stand out from the crowd, and also the animation style for the character sprites, which clearly well-made, feel kinda creepy and robotic to me. But that’s kinda just how I feel about Live2D sprites in general. I also don’t like how they look in games like Magia Record. But who knows, I might still end up playing it. It at least sounds like the sorta gacha game that’s continually growing and improving and changing itself, so that’s always a good thing.
Anyway the bottom line is that gacha games are a bottomless pit of hellfire that nobody should get into in the first place :)
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