Clarste fucked around with this message at 01:20 on Jul 19, 2022

Clarste fucked around with this message at 13:04 on Jul 13, 2021

Clarste fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Jul 14, 2021

Clarste fucked around with this message at 15:04 on Jul 14, 2021

First of all, we got a new operator. Actually, we got her for beating the prologue last time, but I thought it'd be weird to put a character/class intro right at the end and ruin the mood. Our new friend is Melantha:



Melantha is our first Guard, which you can think of as an offensive melee unit, in contrast to a defender. Guards have a lot of different archetypes, so it's hard to say anything about them generally, but basically their job is to kill things, and they tend to be very good at it. In fact, most of the most powerful characters in the game are guards, and sometimes people will jokingly call the game Guardknights, especially in response to a new overpowered guard being released.

Melantha belongs to the single block guard archetype, sometimes called a duelist. Duelists only have 1 block (obviously) and extremely high attack and HP, which makes them very good at fighting dangerous enemies. You can add their dps to your killzone by placing them in from of other blockers (like I've been doing with Plume), or to the side of the enemy's path, facing in. A more advanced technique, which the game absolutely expects you to use, is to airdrop them directly on top of a distant enemy and let them handle it alone.

Melantha in particular is... actually really good! I know I've been saying everyone so far more or less sucks, but Melantha is one of the 3* superstars, alongside another who we'll meet soon. Like all 3 stars, she doesn't really do anything unique, but she's just a really solid example of her archetype and can carry you through a lot of the game. Background-wise, she's a Feline (cat) from Victoria (UK) who comes from a wealthy, merchant background. Her parents educated her in all the finest upper-class hobbies, from music and poetry to fencing, but she's always been shy and withdrawn. Then she got infected and sent to Rhodes Island. For some reason she uses an eastern sword instead of a rapier or whatever, which even her profile is confused by.

Anyway, now that we've beaten the Prologue, we unlock the Base for some reason (even though narratively we're still trying to escape Chernobog). And with the base comes a short little cutscene introducing a new character.

I am honestly unsure why the base should be shut down at this point, but mostly it's just an excuse for a busywork gacha mechanic. Closure proceeds to give a tutorial on how the base works but I'm going to skip it because it's boring.



It's kind of like the base in the recent XCOM games, if you've played those. You clear out rooms and build facilities in them. Then you assign people to work in those facilities (the same operators you fight with), and they each have their own specialties. All of this takes special base materials that you need to go out of your way to collect, and the ultimate goal of it all is more or less to get a passive income of resources needed to level up. Honestly, it ends up being quite significant, but it's also boring to talk about so I will probably never mention it again. However, I would be remiss not to mention the fact that we make most of our money by creating Pure Gold out of nothing and selling it.

With that out of the way, I think it's time for something I'm sure you've all been waiting for. That's right, it's gacha time! New players are given exactly enough currency for a 10 pull on the starter banner, which guarantees at least one 6* within 20 pulls. So let's see what we get!





Wowza! A 6* on our first 10 pull! Now let's go through all our new interns one by one (ignoring any unfamiliar classes since I'll have to explain those later anyway).



Shirayuki is a 4* AOE Sniper. You can probably guess what an AOE sniper does, but just for the record, they are a ranged unit that deals AOE physical damage. Just like AOE casters, they deal more damage per hit but attack slower, for overall less dps. However they shine when hitting multiple targets per attack. And unlike AOE casters, they have MORE range than an ordinary sniper and also don't suck. AOE snipers are generally extremely good. The only one in the game I'd call bad is the 3* one, but what'd you expect from a 3*?

Shirayuki in particular is also extremely good. She is unique among AOE snipers in that she has a skill that deals arts damage, single-handedly making the entire AOE caster archetype obsolete. Actually, now that we're getting into higher rarity characters with flashier skills, I should probably break them down in more detail.

Her first skill (S1, "Shuriken") is an active buff that temporarily increases her range by two tiles. While that is frankly an absurd range to have (going up to 6 tiles in front of her), it doesn't boost her power at all, so eh.

Her second skill (S2, "Fatal Shuriken") is only learned after her first promotion, just like all S2s. We call the first promotion E1, for Elite 1. Anyway, it's an active skill that changes her normal attack to instead throw shurikens that spin in place at their destination, dealing AOE arts damage and also slowing all targets hit because why not, I guess. This is insanely good and is why you would use Shirayuki.

Shirayuki also has a Talent (passive ability) called "Heavy Shuriken" that slows down her attack speed in exchange for more attack power. Which as I've mentioned in my original sniper write-up is almost always a good thing since it means she does better against enemies with higher defense. Everyone has unique talents to set them apart a little, I just haven't mentioned any until now.

In terms of background, Shirayuki is an Anaty (ferret/weasel) from Higashi (Japan). She's the only Anaty in the game I believe [Edit: I was wrong], so I don't know where their homeland is, but they aren't the primary population of Higashi anyway. The game sometimes mistranslates Higashi as "the Far East" because it just means "East" in Japanese so they were reading it literally instead of as a name. As you can probably tell from all the shurikens, Shirayuki is a ninja, and she serves as a bodyguard for a Higashi princess who married into a Lungmen (Hong Kong) family, who we'll meet later in the main plot. Shirayuki is taciturn, but she talks in an old-fashioned samurai kinda way. She is also prone to saying dumb things with absolute seriousness, for maximum comedy value.



Myrrh is a 4* single target medic, the same archetype I've been using. She's certainly better than Hibiscus or Ansel, but not by a huge amount, although she has some utility as a pseudo-AOE healer. She is a Vulpo (fox) with an unknown background: she's from a community hidden in the wilderness (or something), not governed by any modern nation. She's a premodern apothecary who practices herbal medicine and is often going out to gather herbs. She is incredibly awkward around everyone but her closest friends.

S1 (Dual Healing): Auto-activated: Her next heal will hit 2 targets and heal more. It can store up multiple charges if she doesn't heal anyone for a while. Sure, why not.

S2 (Medic Field): A manually activated buff that makes all her heals hit 2 targets and heal more for the duration. Probably a little more useful than her S1 since you can save it for when you need it.

Talent (First Aid Kit): When deployed, she will immediately heal everyone on the team regardless of range. There are probably a lot of things you can do with a heal-bomb, I guess, but it's not an especially large heal and requires you to NOT be using her if you want it on demand, so... I'd say it's situational, at best.



Specter is a 5* AOE guard. AOE guards have only okay stats, but hit multiple enemies at once within their range. Unlike AOE casters or snipers they don't deal splash damage, they just have a maximum number of targets equal to their block value. At base, they have 2 block so they hit 2 targets, but on their 2nd promotion (E2) they get 3 block, and therefore can hit 3 targets. And again, 3 is 50% more than 2. Specter in particular is loving amazing and one of the best characters in the game. Arguably you never need to use a defender again with her around.

Specter is an Ægir (fish and other sea creatures) from Ægir (sea creature homeland), which is technically classified in her profile, but later-released characters are less cagey about it so whatever. Basically Ægir is at war with Cthulhu monsters from the sea, and a lot of Ægir refugees end up in Iberia (Spain). In general, people in this setting talk about The Ocean like it's an evil god. Specter in particular ran out of Sanity Points from one of her encounters, so she currently has no memories and/or is unable to coherently explain her past (including why she's wearing a sexy-nun Halloween costume). However, she belongs to the Abyssal Hunters faction which probably means something. She's a crazy berserker shark who fights with an industrial buzzsaw.

S1 (Attack Up γ): Active: Attack Up. Boring, who cares.

S2 (Bone Fracture): Active: Increases her attack by even more and also she cannot fall below 1 HP for the duration. However, when it runs out she will be stunned for 10 seconds during which time she can't block or attack. This is where the money's at. Local woman too angry to die. With this, she can tank even the most powerful bosses, and since she's an AOE guard with up to 3 block, she's also just generally good at blocking and killing trash. This makes her a versatile character who can replace a defender in most situations and do a better job of it. You have to be careful of the stun though.

Talent (Abyssal Regeneration) : +10% HP, regenerates 2% of her HP per second. In case her S2 wasn't enough, she also heals herself, making her good at handling herself without a medic. Unfortunately, the regen part of the talent doesn't unlock until E2 though. Combined with the extra block/target she gets at E2, this makes her a high priority for promotion.



SilverAsh! SilverAsh (hereafter referred to as Silverash because yeah) is a 6* ranged guard. Ranged guard are guards who can attack at range! Who'd have thought? They have less range than a sniper, but it's still a pretty decent coverage, and they can hit aerial enemies too. However, they only have 80% of their attack power when using a ranged attack as opposed to a melee attack, which is bad. They also have 2 block, although that rarely matters since you normally want to put them behind other melee for better attack coverage. Ranged guards tend towards being overpowered, but that's less because of any innate power of the archetype and more because they all have really overloaded kits for some reason. Such as Silverash, the original OP launch character. Although with powercreep, these days he's merely top tier instead of broken.

Silverash is a Feline (snow leopard) from Kjerag, which is like some kind of Scandinavian Tibet. They're an isolated mountain nation with a religious leader chosen like the Dalai Lama, but Silverash wants to open up their nation to the world and so he founded the Karlan Trading Company of which he is the CEO. He's kind of a rich, arrogant, hypercompetent guy. His ranged attacks are made with his falcon, while his melee attacks involve striking enemies with his cane.

S1 (Power Strike γ): An auto-activated skill that makes his next attack more powerful. It's not exactly interesting, but I might as well mention that unlike every other skill we've discussed so far, it doesn't charge with time but with hits. IE: it takes 3 attacks to charge up, and the 4th attack will be stronger. Jessica has something similar right now.

S2 (Rules of Survival): A very odd skill with only a 5 second charge time that lets him switch into a melee mode where he loses range, gains defense, and starts to regenerate. It's... decent? Like, even good, arguably. But it's not why everyone wants Silverash.

S3 (Truesilver Slash): An active skill where Silverash draws a sword out of his cane, increases his range (mostly sideways) and all of his attacks become multi-target like an AOE guard, up to a maximum of 6 targets per attack. It also buffs his attack power insanely (and lowers his defense but who cares?). Basically, you turn this on and for the next 30 seconds everything even remotely near him dies in short order. However, it has a relatively long cooldown compared to anything else we've seen so far, so you'd better make those 30 seconds count. THIS is why everyone wants Silverash. Other than Amiya who is special, only 6* characters have a 3rd skill and they only learn them at E2, which for now is just a distant dream. But it's a nice dream.

Talent 1 (Leader): All your operators have a shorter Redeploy Time. Which I haven't really discussed, but basically if you die or retreat, you can't be deployed again for like 90 seconds or something. This talent lowers that number. It works even if he's not deployed, as long as he's on the team.

Talent 2 (Eagle Eye): All enemies in his range lose stealth. Man, we don't even know what stealth is and he's already negating it. He has to be E2 for it though.

And that's all from the 10 pull I did.

But wait, there's more! In addition to the 10 pull, I also did some individual pulls with some other currency I've been picking up over time. The way the gacha works is that you are guaranteed a 5* or better within the first 10 pulls on any new banner, so I pulled on a different banner to get that guaranteed 5*. But we'll start from the bottom again: lowest rarities first.



Catapult is a 3* AOE Sniper. She is literally the AOE sniper I said was the only bad one back when I was talking about Shirayuki.

She's a Kuranta from Kazimierz, and belongs to Reserve Team A6, which consists of all the 3* units added after release (mostly filling in archetypes that didn't have 3* examples before). As a team, they're like... a bunch of misfits who found a family together. And Catapult's role in the family is as the lazy and rebellious problem child who creates more work for everyone else.



Cardigan is a 3* defender. She sure does exist, huh? I totally forgot about her until I pulled her just now. Unlike Beagle whose skill buffs her defense, Cardigan heals herself, which could be useful I guess. Incidentally, her intro line up there is weirdly translated, what she's saying is that her real name is Merry. Sometimes people just like to introduce themselves, it's not like their names are top-secret.

She's a Perro (dog) from Leithanien, home of the Caprinae (goats) It's a scholarly nation, a leader in arts research with famous universities and stuff. They have a lot magitech gizmos too, although they don't use that word. But they also have a history of colonialism and genocide. Cardigan herself feels like she doesn't fit in with Leithanien city-life because she is bad at arts. She wanted to be a professional skier but couldn't cut it. She's friends with Adnachiel. What more do you want from me?!



Kroos! Kroos is a 3* anti-air sniper, and is the other 3* superstar besides Melantha. There is absolutely nothing special about her, she just deals very consistent damage to low-defense enemies.

Kroos is a Cautus from Rim Billiton, but moved to Columbia where she became best friends with Fang and Beagle. She's cheerful and talented, but also lazy. And while she's always smiling, mess with her friends and she will show no mercy. Supposedly she angrily cussed out her old Columbian squad when she and her friends were being discharged for being infected, and hints of that ferocity shine through now and then.

She's also kind of a meme because one of her voice lines in battle is a sing-song "I'm over heeere!" which just sounds amusing in Japanese.



Mousse is a 4* arts guard. Arts guards are like duelists, except they deal arts damage. Which is actually super good. They're less tough though, and not quite as good at airdropping as duelists. Arts guards are good enough in general that Mousse is always going to be useful.

Also like Melantha, Mousse is a Feline from Victoria. Although apparently she is actually French? Her hometown has a French name, as well as her codename. Whatever, maybe we shouldn't let ourselves get too focused on the real-world equivalent nations. Anyway, she's like the youngest child from a large, wealthy family, but she doesn't really have any particular talents so her family all silently gave up hope on her ever amounting to anything. And then when she got infected they immediately hid her from society, locking her in a garden before quietly arranging to ship her off to Rhodes Island (presumably to avoid bringing shame to the family). So, you know, she feels lowkey rejected by her family and stuff. Except she finds comfort in hanging out with "kitties" which are treated like some sort of mysterious creature and tbh I don't know what the heck is going on there.

S1 (Scratch): Another attack-triggered skill that increases damage every X attacks. However, it also gives a debuff to the enemy that lowers attack power. Generally this doesn't matter much, but on certain bosses it can trivialize things.

S2 (Fury): Temporary attack and defense buff. Not very interesting, I'd stick with S1.

Talent (Combo): Small chance to attack twice. Pretty decent, especially since arts damage doesn't have to worry about doubling the defense reduction like physical damage would.



Myrtle is a 4* um... Flag Vanguard? Banner Vanguard? I don't remember exactly what we're calling these. Anyway, they're 1 block vanguards who sacrifice almost all combat power for even more DP generation along with support utility. They have a particular gimmick where when they're using a skill they stop blocking entirely, which can be kind of useful actually for keeping them alive, but also even further emphasizes that you shouldn't rely on them for fighting (although you shouldn't completely count them out either). They are also insanely good and a lot of people never use any other vanguards. Myrtle in particular is also insanely good even for her archetype. I've heard people call her a secret 6*. She's that good.

Myrtle is a Durin from ???. Somewhere underground. Durin live underground. No one has any idea what things are like down there because Durin are all super weird and can't describe it very well. Basically she is impulsive and whimsical, but also surprisingly good at giving battlefield commands (which I suppose is the idea behind the archetype, she is a "leader"). She insists on being called Generalissimo.

S1 (Support β): Generates a large amount of DP over time. Like, a huge amount. Remember when Fang was conjuring 6 DP out of nowhere? Remember Plume's +1 per kill? Well, Myrtle makes 14. That's a lot.

S2 (Healing Wings): Myrtle turns herself into a medic and starts healing adjacent allies for the duration. And also generates DP just because. Sure, why not have a vanguard who is also your healer?

Talent (Glistening): All vanguards regenerate a flat amount of HP per second while she's deployed. Time for vanguardknights! No, seriously, you don't even need her healing skill when she can passively keep all your vanguards alive for the entire battle. E2 only.



Zima is a 5* 2 block vanguard. Basically a much better version of Fang. Honestly, I wouldn't say she's particularly great, but she does the job. Vanguard stats are so low by default that they benefit a lot more from tiny increases, so just being higher rarity makes her a whole lot better in combat than her 3* or 4* counterparts. Although frankly I'm annoyed that we're getting so many of these guys.

Zima is an Ursus (bear) from the Ursus Empire. Actually, she's from Chernobog, the city we're in right now. The one that's getting destroyed. She's a survivor of the Chernobog Incident, which I guess is sort of a spoiler for how it plays out, but hey, they let us recruit her already, didn't they? Formerly the toughest kid on the playground, she was nicknamed General Winter for her efforts at beating up bullies (Zima means Winter in Russian). But during and after the incident, she's done a lot of things she's not proud of in order to survive. She wields a firefighting axe that she picked up somewhere along the way. Her goal is to overthrow the Doctor and take over command.

S1 (Charge γ): Your basic DP generating skill, although it's better than Fang's Charge α.

S2 (Ursus's Roar): Buffs attack and defense for all vanguards (by an amount that's roughly equivalent to other people's buffs that only hit themselves), and gives them all the DP on kill effect for the duration. Also generates DP. So, uh, vanguardknights, anyone?

Talent (Spearheader): All vanguards cost less DP to deploy as long as she's in the squad (she doesn't have to be deployed). Yup, vanguardknights. That said, while we have a lot of vanguards, we're still lacking a lot of the big powerhouses.

And that's it, those are our new recruits.

...Wait, no, I almost forgot:



Vanilla is a 3* vanguard. She's basically the same as Fang, but with slightly more attack and less defense. I got her from Recruitment (as opposed to the gacha, which is called Headhunting), which is like a separate way of getting characters that doesn't take any gacha currency, but mostly only spits out 3* dupes with the occasional 4*. I won't be talking about it much, but if I get a new character from it I might as well introduce them.

Vanilla is a Vouivre (wyvern) from Vouivre (wyvern homeland), which is part of a nation called Sargon. Sargon has a lot of remote deserts and jungles and is relatively decentralized, consisting mainly of local tribes. Vanilla comes from a small desert village with only minor trade relations with the nearest city (which was Vouivre), but one day a group of Blacksteel mercenaries came through and Vanilla was so fascinated by these strangers, seemingly from another world entirely, that she joined their caravan and became a Blacksteel trainee. She keeps originium slugs and other weird animals as pets.

Anyway, it's finally time to choose a team, maybe.




This is our current roster, filtering out classes we don't know about yet. As you can see, I've only leveled up Amiya. And that's because YOU, the audience, get to decide who I'm going to use! Just shout out names in the thread (in bold please) and I'll tally them up (ignoring any 2*, although you can still shout out for 12F if you really want to, I guess). Actually, make that "up to three names" so we get better odds of overlap. Then I'll try to keep the top 5 or so at the top of the leveling curve until the next chapter. And therefore, you know, use them. Eventually I may need to raise our minimum level too to keep up, but for now that shouldn't be an issue. I haven't thought this through very much, so expect a lot of tweaking as to how exactly this system will work moving forward.

Clarste fucked around with this message at 02:41 on Jul 15, 2021

Clarste fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Jul 15, 2021

Well, the votes are in and apparently we all love Myrtle and Specter:



To be honest I'm surprised at this interest in voting for GOOD characters. I was expecting to get saddled with Adnachiel or something. Anyway, since these early stages are pretty easy, I might as well use every single person anyone voted for:



In the future I'll probably have to make some executive decisions to create a more reasonable squad composition, but for now I'll just throw in a medic and we're good. Everyone is pretty high level for this early point in the game, mostly because I've been sitting on this account for like a week with nothing better to spend my Sanity on. This amount of resources will be absolutely trivial in the long run though.



Incidentally, you can also rename your squads, and you're forced to do so for an early tutorial. But the default squad names are invalid because they use an illegal character (a space). So for now we are 1stSquad (nospace), but I guess I could also take suggestions from the thread. Not that it matters.

In further administrative news, I got 2 new characters from the recruitment mechanic so I might as well introduce them. I feel like we've already had a billion of these, but hopefully the rate will slow down a lot once I get all the 3* operators.



Popukar is a 3* AOE Guard, like Specter. AOE guards are always good, but unfortunately Popukar falls extremely far behind the rest of them because as a 3* she can never reach E2. Which you might remember is when they become able to hit a 3rd target.

Popukar is a Cautus (rabbit) from Rim Billiton. She's a former slave who was freed and adopted by one of the leaders of Rhodes Island. RI gets a lot of infected kids, so they also have schools and stuff, for the record. She's part of Reserve Team A6, which if you'll remember is a group of newer 3* operators who cover gaps in the archetypes and sort of form a family together. Popukar is obviously the baby of the family. Also, I guess I haven't been mentioning this, but you can see a logo in the background of the recruitment screen which shows what team they belong to, if any. Otherwise it defaults to the Rhodes Island logo or the flag of the country they're from.



Dobermann is a 4* Support Guard. Support guards are 2 block guards who can hit 2 tiles ahead, allowing them to stand behind other melee units and still attack. They also have talents and skills that revolve around buffing your other operators. Unfortunately their buffs tend to be oddly weak or specific or both, and they usually aren't worth a slot in your squad.

Dobermann probably doesn't need much introduction since she's been a main character in the story, but she's an ex-military Perro from Bolívar who serves as a drill sergeant for all the new recruits. She attacks with a whip.

Talent (Starter Instuctor): All 3* operators gain 10% more attack. I haven't tested this, but I assume it works without her being deployed. Honestly this might be almost decent if you're early on in the game and somehow have mostly 3* units anyway, but it falls off hard.

S1 (Power Strike β): Every Nth hit is stronger.

S2 (Spur): Personal attack buff + the effect of her talent becomes 2-3 times stronger for the duration. So 20-30% more attack instead. Again, that's not an irrelevant amount of attack, but it only affects the worst units in the game and it's not really a huge buff either. If it doubled or tripled their attack instead maybe there'd be a fun build you could do.

Anyway, time for Episode 1: Evil Time Part 2



I've been informed by the thread that the Russian in these chapter logos says "Chernobog: Ursus Empire" which makes sense. Moving right along:

Battle Video



Incidentally, I notice that very few people are watching the videos compared to how many different people have commented on the thread (like, they're all at 1 or 2 views), but since they aren't hard to record I'll just keep doing them anyway. These early battles are definitely pretty boring so I understand.



Trapping units between melee is generally a good idea, and Myrtle is particularly good at it because she can turn off blocking at will by using a skill.



We probably have too many melee operators for this map. It's getting really crowded. But more importantly, we're finally introduced to our very first ranged enemy! These Cocktail Throwers will throw molotov cocktails at your units for minor damage. The important part though is that they can hit your ranged units too, who tend to be way squishier than melee units. Dealing with ranged units requires very different positioning considerations, especially with regards to medic placement. Although these guys are the weakest ones in the game, so eh. Ranged enemies pretty much always target a square around them, as estimated here:



These guys have roughly 1 tile range, so it's pretty small, but later enemies will have bigger squares. It's also important to remember that they count the tiles diagonally too, which gives them slightly longer range than otherwise.



This is also the first map where I hit the deployment limit, as shown here. Generally you can only have 8 units deployed at once, even though you can fit 12 people into a squad. This forces you to undeploy Vanguards, for example. More challenging maps might also want you to switch up your formation between waves to handle different types of enemies.

Anyway, I win.

And that's the end of 1-1. As a reward, we unlock a new kind of shop that I won't even bother to explain, but it comes with a new free character:



Courier is a 4* 2 block vanguard. I mentioned this with Vanilla and Ibblebibble brought it up in the thread, but for some reason there are two different lines of 2 block vanguards, going up through the rarities. One line has higher attack, while the other has higher defense. For example, Vanilla and Fang are both 3*, but Vanilla is attack-oriented while Fang is defense-oriented. Similarly, Scavenger and Courier are both 4*, but Courier is much more defense oriented than Scavenger. Zima is also defensive, but we haven't met her offensive counterpart yet.

Courier is an Itra (deer? I'm sure someone will tell me the precise animal; it's not a common race in this world) from Kjerag, the snowy country Silverash is from. Actually, he's a servant of Silverash, with absolute loyalty to his master. On the surface he's an easygoing deliveryman for the Karlan Trade Company, but in the shadows he fights off assassins coming after Silverash, etc.

Edit: I am told he is a musk deer.

Talent (Karlan Patrol): Increases his def a bit whenever he's blocking at least 2 enemies at once. Not too shabby, since every little bit of defense counts for a lot.

S1 (Charge β): Standard DP generator. Scavenger has the exact same skill with the same name (actually, I forgot to introduce her, huh?).

S2 (Command - Defense): Defense buff + DP. Nothing fancy.

Moving on, the next mission is an odd one:



We are forced to use a premade team with fixed levels. They rarely do this, but basically it means that these are supposed to be the actual characters who are actually present in this battle, as opposed to the non-canon gacha team we have. If you cross-reference all the profiles and events and whatnot, it turns out that most of the characters you recruit actually join RI AFTER the main story, at least up to where we are so far. Anyway, for this next mission we will be playing as Fang's team.

...I wonder if it would be possible to do a "canon-only" run through the game? Probably not; a lot of the time you'd only have like 2 people.

Who's she talking to? The Doctor's not here, and she's the commanding officer for this team. Isn't she supposed to be the one handling the deployments?

Battle Video



Anyway, I put Plume in the top lane. She can handle it alone, right?



I proceed to build up my force at the bottom lane, which has way more and way stronger enemies. But whoops! Looks like Plume can't handle it after all. She only has 1 block after all, so if she can't kill them fast enough they'll just walk right by her. Er... let's just forget that happened.



I restart the stage, but this time I give her some backup, which is enough to prevent any leaks. While I could have prevented this by playing more cautiously the first time around, I feel like this is a good opportunity to mention that this game has a lot of trial and error. You can't tell exactly how many enemies will be coming from where on your first attempt, so if you're not prepared to switch tactics on a dime you might get tripped up like this. I don't think that's entirely a bad thing, and it's not like you're penalized much for failure, but in the future I may be losing missions quite a lot before I beat them. I'll try to keep you informed of all my hilarious failures, because personally I don't enjoy LPs where they just stomp their way through the game with perfect knowledge and planning, but I also won't show every single failed attempt.

Mission 1-3:

Battle Video



This time there are two lanes going around a big block in the center. The first wave is just slugs on the top lane, with a Junkman standing just out of range, taunting you. Although I guess I could've just slammed Melantha on top of him. But I didn't think of that at the time.



Later, a shield guy spawns heading towards the bottom lane, although he also stays still for a bit. This is the game signalling what to expect later on.



So we plant our arts damage (Amiya and Mousse) on the bottom lane. Mousse is standing in... I don't know what to call that, a little alcove with a tiny wall? Basically this is a terrain feature marking a spot that the enemies will never enter, but you can put melee units there. So she can face down and attack anyone Scavenger is blocking from safety. ...Why does she looked squished like that?



The waves build up over time until it looks more like this. I probably placed Myrtle and Specter a little too far ahead to get good, overlapping ranged support, but whatever.

Battle Video



This time we've got three lanes. In situations like this, the little line they show to represent enemy paths is extremely helpful, as it tells you which lanes need to be blocked immediately. They rarely come from multiple lanes right away.



So I place Scavenger in the middle and Myrtle off the the side where it won't matter if she stops blocking to use her skill.



It ends up looking this. Melee in all lanes and overlapping sniper fire facing up and down.



Melantha is also facing down because being able to cover two lanes is slightly more useful than facing forward and getting to hit the enemy a couple more times before they reach you. Honestly I should have positioned Myrtle like this in the first place.



We win without too much trouble though. You guys gave me a ton of melee to work with so we had no issues blocking.



Mission 1-5 has no dialog, but it's a "boss" battle, indicated by the red nameplate on the mission-select map. There are also actual boss battles with actual bosses so maybe I should come up with a better term for these. Tough Encounter?

Battle Video



As the final exam of all the extra lane stuff they've been throwing at us, it has an impressive four lanes. This is about as bad as it ever gets, lane-wise. This could actually be tough if we were more of a ranged team.



That said, the principles are the same as last time. Only the middle two lanes will have enemies at first, so I feel comfortable leaving the top and bottom with only 1 block melee units for now (Myrtle and Melantha).



They also throw in some drones, so don't forget your snipers. For a huge portion of the game, you pretty much always want to have 2 anti-air snipers to handle things smoothly.



By the halfway point, we're already fully deployed. Probably because we have 3 vanguards including Myrtle. ...Huh, I guess this mission had a deployment limit of 10 instead of 8. To be honest I don't pay that much attention to that, I just notice when I run out of slots. Anyway, there's nothing this mission can throw at us that we can't can't handle anymore.

I'm not sure if this is a great stopping point, but we beat a Tough Encounter and this is getting pretty long, so good enough for me.

Clarste fucked around with this message at 07:13 on Jul 16, 2021

Clarste fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Jul 17, 2021

As is becoming a habit, we'll start with a character introduction. Last time, we got Orchid:



Orchid is a 3* Supporter. Supporters are frankly more like a "Ranged (Other)" category that lumps together a lot of very different archetypes. That said, by far the most common Supporter archetype is the slow supporter, who deals ranged arts damage that briefly slows down the movement speed of the enemy. "Briefly" is the operative word here, as the slow lasts for even less duration than a supporter's attack speed, meaning you can't even keep a single enemy slowed, just delay them a little every so often. Slow supporters have about the same range as a caster, but shifted backwards so they can hit enemies behind themselves. This gives them a fairly unique positioning niche. Orchid is the most basic possible slow supporter, but sometimes that's all you need. Other times it is not: unlike a lot of Tower Defense games, slowing is not even close to mandatory, it's just another tool in your kit. That said, the better supporters can also deal good damage while they're at it.

Orchid is a Liberi (bird) from Columbia (USA). She's a former fashion magazine editor, and often helps other operators coordinate outfits that will cover up their Oripathy lesions. She's also the captain of Reserve Team A6, and serves as the team's collective Mom, for better or worse. She's pretty cool, I guess.

In other news:



We now have enough materials to promote Amiya! Yay! There's basically an achievement system in the game that encourages you to try out each new thing at least once, and by doing everything they give you a bunch of resources, including exactly what is necessary to promote Amiya. I assume this was intentional. We still can't actually farm these resources even if we wanted to. Also, while promoting is universally a good idea, it does also raise your DP cost, so be careful about that. In the long run everyone will simply be more expensive to deploy than they are right now, but you get used to it.



This is the preview of what she'll get from her promotion. She learns a new skill (S2) and her range increases slightly. All ranged units increase their range on promotion to E1. Some of them will increase again at E2, but it depends on the archetype. Frankly, as a veteran player the E0 ranges we've been using so far feel strangely short to me.



When you actually do the promotion you get a splash screen similar to a character being recruited. Amiya changes her portrait at E1, but everyone else stays the same until E2. This doesn't affect her profile in the story though, of course. Advanced portraits tend be less "portrait" and more "action pose" so it'd look weird to talk to someone like that.



Here are her stats at E2. Your stats do not change at all on Promotion, all it does is set your level to 1 again so you can level up further. You could also think of it as her being level 51, but it's actually slightly better than that because it also resets the cost of leveling up. It's not quite as cheap as it was at E0 level 1, but we can easily get her to level 20 again for basically nothing.



Anyway, I guess this is a good time to talk about Amiya's skills.

Talent (???): This does absolutely nothing until E2.

S1 (Tactical Chant γ): Increases her attack speed considerably. This isn't exciting or anything, but it's reliable.

S2 (Spirit Burst): 100 second cooldown(!), auto-activated, splits her normal attack into a bunch of weaker shots that hit targets in range at random, for significantly more total damage per attack. When the skill duration ends, Amiya is stunned for 10 seconds and can't attack. This... It's certainly a powerful burst of damage when it's up. And if you time it right, the stun won't really matter. Stun is less of an issue for ranged units anyway, since they don't have to block. Even the long cooldown could be worked around. But what really makes this skill hard to use is the fact that it's auto-activated, meaning that it activates on its own whenever the cooldown happens to complete, and will often waste itself when there are no enemies nearby and then stun you. You CAN control its timing by controlling when exactly you deploy Amiya, but that requires you to predict what will happen 100 seconds ahead of time, which is only really plausible on a stage you've been practicing a lot already.

That said, I'm going to use it anyway, because it's a way cooler skill. I'll save her S3 for when we get to E2.

Next comes a tutorial about ranged targeting that I'm going to skip because I already mentioned it, but I'm going to include some of the dialog because it's the start of a running gag:

Yeah, Jessica brought her own gun from home.

Our reward for the tutorial I just skipped is:



Our very first 1* unit! Lancet-2 is a 1* Medic, but 1* units are special because they don't take up a deployment slot (although they do take a spot on your squad). Not only that, they all have relatively powerful effects on entering the battlefield. So you might even think of them as active "spells" you can use. However, they have much longer redeployment cooldowns than usual to prevent spamming them. Also they're extremely weak, stat-wise. And they're all robots. And not, like, humanoid robots, but little cars that can talk. 1* units can only be recruited from Recruitment (the non-gacha thing), but are actually about as rare to pull as 6* units, technically.

Lancet-2 is a lovely lady who heals the entire team on deployment. She's good for providing minor heals to someone far away from the group who isn't taking major damage but will eventually die from attrition. She has charmed at least one operator with her sexy voice.

Anyway, story time:



No intro cutscene this time, it's implied we've just been fighting continuously since last time.



Once again, it's a repeat of an older map, only damaged from the Catastrophe.



Partway through the battle, it pauses and the characters have a conversation.

I think this is new to this version of the map, but there's a line of enemies spawning from the top, especially ranged enemies. I dump Melantha up there to take care of them all, since otherwise they'd probably hit Amiya on the way down. Melee units have way more defense than ranged units, so Melantha is relatively safe.



Ranged enemies also come from the bottom left, but they target Myrrh (the medic), who can heal herself so it's not a problem.





The next mission is also a continuation of the same battle.

If you're not paying attention, you might not notice that the top entrance is now an exit, which changes where the enemy bottleneck is to the middle of the map. I know this caught me by surprise the first time I did this map, anyway.



Well, it IS a bottleneck, but ultimately I ended up treating it as two separate lanes. This map was characterized by strong feelings of "What the hell am I doing? Do I even have a plan?" But it all worked out, possibly because I am overleveled.



I redid the whole mission practice mode just to take this screenshot of the Mission Accomplished screen. Since I also forgot to record the video.

Then she stops moving there, and the real battle begins.



This is her path. Basically she will stand there doing nothing the entire battle and then stroll right down the middle near the end.



And here are her stats. I removed her name since she hasn't introduced herself yet. Enemies being Sarkaz is relevant for, like, exactly one person's talent or something, so every Sarkaz enemy is labeled. Basically she is a ranged attacker who will throw grenades at anyone within about 2.5 tiles. She also has an ability on about a 20 second cooldown to place a remote-detonated bomb on top someone in range, which she detonates after 3 seconds for dramatic effect. This does relatively massive damage compared to anything else we've seen so far, and can instantly one-shot most of my ranged operators. It's also AOE, so, uh, watch out. Below about 40% HP she starts glowing with a red aura, but honestly I have no idea what effect this has, if any. Actually, maybe it's what makes her bombs AOE? Honestly it's a little confusing to me what their actual range is.



I am feeling weirdly panicked at this point, even having to pause the game after the cutscene to calm down, but ultimately I just create a standard defense formation on the far left. This isn't always the best play, but my instinct whenever I have no idea what I'm doing is to set up camp as close to the exit as possible.



Then I think: "wait, what happens if I just drop Melantha right on her head?" The cooldown on the boss's timebomb starts ready, so the first enemy she sees will immediately get the bomb.



Then I place Ansel to heal Melantha from outside of the boss's range. Ansel has to play catch-up and Melantha is slowing losing HP despite the heals.



Eventually Melantha dies and I replace her with a defender and start wailing on the boss with Yato. When the boss dies, she sets off a smoke bomb and slinks away. That's just what her death animation looks like.





Then the rest of the mission plays out pretty uneventfully without the boss. I probably would have enjoyed this more if she had killed off half the team, which I assure you she could, if you let her walk straight into your formation. Curse my good instincts and foreknowledge of her skills.



Then we have to do it for real.

The map looks like this. The section W starts in has no path to the exit.



This is the map preview. The yellow dotted lines indicate that she is moving between stairways, the "hidden passages" that Dobermann was referring to. This is a semi-common mechanic that just makes the enemy paths more complicated. Quite a bit of time passes between entering a stairway and exiting one, but it doesn't seem to have to do with the distance traveled, so they're basically just teleporters. Anyway, the idea here is that W will completely bypass the obvious chokepoint and sneak around behind your defense line. She pretty much annihilates any ranged units on her own, so you either need a separate defense line just for her, or to stop her before she gets there. I still have Melantha, so I think you can imagine what I'll do.



But first of all the basic set-up.



Then a more complex set-up. Frankly I am dumb and put Myrrh within W's range, but luckily she has just barely enough HP to survive the initial bomb. And since I placed Melantha right afterward, she will tank any follow-up normal attacks. Myrrh is angled to heal both Melantha and Specter.



I add Mousse and Shirayuki to the mix. Both Melantha and Mousse are really hurt because they are taking bombs together, but W dies first.



When in doubt, just drop a bunch of guards on top of the boss. Works every time, sometimes.

Clarste fucked around with this message at 09:11 on Jul 18, 2021

Okay, just to set out a roadmap for what to expect from this LP, what I'm thinking right now is that immediately following the end of a chapter I'll introduce all the new characters I've pulled since the beginning of the previous chapter. Yes, there are even more. This will allow me to open up a vote on who to use for the next chapter. And unlike the 24 hour voting period of the first vote, I'll be able to keep it open longer while I do other things. I'm not sure if that matters, but it can't hurt.

The "other things" I would do is probably post some kind of chapter retrospective and also some of the vignettes from sidestory events that I feel are thematically appropriate or just interesting. They're often lighter than the main story so they could function as a little breather between chapters without having to dive into a full event out of nowhere.

So that's the basic plan, although of course everything is up in the air until I actually do it. Oh yeah, and here's a chart of how much text there is in the game, by chapter (based on the Chinese wordcount numbers):



6.6% of the way there, woohoo!



Spot is a 3* Healing Defender, our first one. A healing defender is a defender with somewhat lower stats than other defenders, but they have access to skills that can heal themselves or others. While their usefulness depends on exactly what their heals are, they can often block a lane on their own without a medic, or even replace a medic entirely by healing the people next to them. They are extremely efficient units that can essentially combine two deployment slots into one. They only have 2 block by default but it upgrades to 3 at E1, which means that I will probably repeatedly forget that they don't have 3 block yet. Spot's skill puts him into a devoted healing mode temporarily, like Myrtle's S2, but honestly I don't like that version as much as the healing defenders with cheaper, constant heals.

Spot is a Rebbah (hyena) from Sargon (Africa I guess). He comes from a strict military family, but you wouldn't really know it from his personality (despite what his profile says). His role in the Reserve Team A6 family is to be the sarcastic older brother. He collects superhero comics and is into fashion.



Midnight is a 3* Ranged Guard (like Silverash), and our final 3*. Yay! There's not much to say about him gameplay-wise other than that he is absolutely not Silverash so don't expect him to be. He does have a skill which lets him deal arts damage though, which can help make up for the -20% attack penalty ranged guards have to deal with when attacking at range.

Midnight is a Sarkaz from Higashi (Japan), where he worked as a host at a host club, as in an entertainer at a bar whose job was to flirt with women to keep them buying drinks. He was extremely successful and popular until he was poisoned with Originium by someone jealous of him, making him infected. He's the final member of Reserve Team A6, and is sort of like the Team Dad. He's superficially kind of self-centered and irresponsible, but deep down he cares.



Shaw! Shaw is our first Specialist, the 8th and final class in this game. If Supporters were "Ranged (Other)" then Specialists are "Melee (Other)" although frankly they are even more varied in their archetypes. There are no 3* specialists at all, marking them as sort of an advanced class.

Shaw in particular is a push specialist, which as you might imagine means she pushes enemies around with her attacks. Each push skill has an associated Force value which increases with skill rank (don't worry about skill ranks, it's just another way to level up your character) and can be represented as a number from 1 through 5. Enemies also have a Weight value on the same scale, and the amount they get knocked back is determined by Force minus Weight. Basically heavy enemies are mostly but not entirely immune to pushing. There are a lot of strategies you can only do with a push specialist, but their most basic use is knocking enemies off cliffs for instant death. Push specialists have 2 block, standard melee range and can attack 2 targets at once like an AOE guard, but can also be deployed on ranged tiles too, making their positioning more flexible.

Shaw is a Zalak (rodent, specifically a squirrel) from Lungmen (Hong Kong). She's a firefighter who talksreallyfastwithoutspaces and likes to walk around the base checking for fire code violations. She especially dislikes all the casters who throw fireballs around all willy nilly. Despite her appearance, she seem to be an adult, she's just really short. She knocks people back by shooting them with a fire hose.

Talent (Fireproof Suit): Shaw gets bonus Arts Resistance.

S1 (Steam Pump): A short-cooldown push that activates automatically on her next attack (so it won't waste itself with no targets). It hits 2 targets like her normal attack does. Basically you want to be using this if you're going to be constantly pushing an entire lane into a pit or whatever.

S2 (High-Pressure Water Cannon): A longer cooldown, manually activated skill that knocks back all enemies in front of her. I suppose there might be situations where you want this, but 90% of the time it's less useful than constant pushing.



Rope is a 4* pull specialist. Pull specialist are like push specialists except they pull enemies towards them instead of pushing them away. They have 2 block and 3 attack range, and like pushers can also be deployed on ranged tiles. However, they can only hit one enemy at a time. Like pushing, you want to pull enemies off of cliffs, etc. Rope is the most basic puller.

Rope is a Cautus originally from Rim Billiton (Australia), although she lived in the slums of Lungmen (Hong Kong) until joining Rhodes Island. She's a cat burglar who steals to survive, and also for fun, but even after she got caught she didn't mind prison too much since she got free meals and a roof over her head. She had a weird relationship with the Lungmen police where they kind of got along with her and even respected her skills, and they lent her to Rhodes Island as a kind of work-release program.

Talent (Auditory Training): Rope has a passive chance to dodge physical attacks. IE: they have a random chance to deal no damage to her.

S1 (Hook Shot): Short cooldown, auto-activated pulling attack. Her bread and butter.

S2 (Double Hook): Longer cooldown, manually activated but it pulls 2 at once. Eh, I guess if the timing works out that way.



Matoimaru is a 4* duelist, the same archetype as Melantha. While she has higher base stats, she costs more DP to deploy and her talents and skills are a little harder to work with, so she's really not used as a strict upgrade of Melantha very often. I'm sure she could get the job done though.

Matoimaru is an oni (oni) from Higashi (Japan). I don't think we know enough about Higashi to say what its primary population is, but oni only ever come from Higashi. They have a reputation for being strong and brutish. Matoimaru's hobbies are sparring, soccer, and flower arrangement and she will drag people kicking and screaming into participating if she has to. She's kind of a straightforward, simple-minded person.

Talent (Demonic Physique): E2 only. Matoimaru has -20% defense, but +20% HP. This kind of thing is one of the reasons she's harder to use, but the extra HP does make her even better against casters.

S1 (Regeneration β): Medium cooldown, she immediately heals herself for a percentage of her HP. It's kind of weird for an attacker not to have an attack buff, but I suppose you can have her solo certain 1 block lanes with this.

S2 (Demonic Power): Her defense drops to 0 and she gets a large attack buff. Honestly, I love this sort of thing, high risk and high reward, and you can mitigate the risk with positioning. But it also means you can't really tank physical damage with her.



Earthspirit is a 4* Slow Supporter, making her more or less an upgrade to Orchid. She's not especially powerful, but she's got an interesting niche, which is usually what makes a 4* good. Better to be overspecialized than generically useless. That said, she is not good.

Earthspirit is a Caprinae (goat) from Leithanien (magitech Austria-Hungary). She's a geologist, which is a way more important job in this world because they study originium. She works for the Catastrophe Messengers, which are an international non-profit organization dedicated to detecting the signs of oncoming Catastrophes and alerting nearby towns and cities. This involves specifically seeking out places in the wilderness that might show signs of Catastrophe, often alone, so the job is both highly respected and also only crazy people will do it. It's also one of the few jobs Infected can do, since they stay isolated from other people most of the time. Earthspirit herself is more like a consultant though. Her job is just her job, not her life. She is vaguely annoyed that becoming infected did not give her a deeper connection to and understanding of rocks.

Talent (Geological Survey): Increases the duration of her slowing effects.

S1 (ATK Up β): Standard ATK boost.

S2 (Quicksand Conversion): She stops attacking entirely and repeatedly applies slow to every enemy within her attack range. Losing the DPS is pretty bad, but if you absolutely need an entire room full of enemies slowed, she's your girl.



Perfumer is a 4* AOE Medic. AOE medics heal less than single target medics, but hit 3 targets at once, which is extremely useful in a lot of situations. They have the same range as single target medics, but it's shifted backwards so they can hit behind themselves. Basically you plop then down in the middle of a group. Perfumer in particular has a really powerful talent, making her a 4* superstar, of sorts.

Perfumer is a Vulpo (fox) from Minos (Greece, home to the bull people). With her exceptional sense of smell, she became a skilled perfumer, specializing in aromatherapies. Although she does it more for the sake of doing it than to survive, since she comes from a very wealthy family and would never need to work a day in her life. She's fascinated by the way that different smells can have psychological effects on patients.

Talent (Lavander): Restores a small percentage of her attack every second to ALL operators on the field. This is more or less what makes her great. Constant regeneration over an infinite range solves a lot of specific problems.

S1 (Healing Up β): Standard heal boost.

S2 (Fine Blending): She buffs herself to heal much more per hit, but healing half as often. Math-wise this works out in her favor, but honestly I'd rather she healed faster for less. Getting caught between heals is a common cause of death, after all. I'd still use it over her S1 though, I just hate boring skills.



Gravel is a 4* Fast-Redeployment Specialist. Fast-redeploys are extremely cheap to deploy, and have extremely short redeploy timers (like, 15 seconds instead of 100) and skills that activate immediately when they are deployed instead of having a cooldown. The idea is that instead of planting them somewhere and leaving them there until the end of the mission, you will put them down to do a specific job and then pull them back to use later. They have 1 block and attack quickly for low damage, which is frankly awful, but you don't use these guys to deal damage. Gravel is arguably one of the best fast-deploys, making her absolutely another 4* superstar.

Incidentally, I forgot to take a screenshot when I recruited her, so the screenshot here is of me recruiting an extra copy of her (taken from my main account, which can more or less generate Gravels on demand). When you get a duplicate copy of a character, you get some shop currency that I will explain later, along with a token of that character which can be used to raise their "Potential". Basically these are small bonuses like decreased DP cost or tiny stat boosts, which makes finding dupes rewarding, but hardly mandatory to be usable.

Gravel is a Zalak (rodent, prairie dog) from Kazimierz (Poland, horse country). She's a former slave with a barcode tatooed on her arm who somehow worked her way up to knighthood. Although not the chivalrous kind of knight like Nearl: more the "knighthood is actually just a military rank" kind of knight, and she specializes in covert ops and assassinations. She is currently infiltrating Rhodes Island for unknown purposes. Despite that, her personality is cheerful, kind of flirty, and she doesn't seem to take anything very seriously. She kisses you on the cheek in her intro because prairie dogs kiss each other, it's an animal joke.

Talent (Support of the Little): All operators that cost 10 or less get a defense bonus. Mostly that's just her, but hey, why not. It also lowers her own DP cost.

S1 (Shadow Assault): On deployment, she buffs her defense to 3 to 5 times as much, which decays over 3 seconds. Her niche is that she's the tanky fast-deploy who can plop down and block someone in a pinch.

S2 (Rat Swarm): On deployment, she gains a shield which is several times her max HP. Basically it is very hard to kill her, which makes her an incredible decoy. Remember how ranged units target the most recently deployed unit? Remember how W had an incredibly powerful bomb every 20 seconds? Well Gravel can easily tank that bomb, then tank the next bomb, and then redeploy for cheap just in time to tank the third bomb. No healing necessary, rinse and repeat.



Gravel also has an alternate costume in the shop right now. Incidentally, I find it amusing how alt costumes are framed as the characters modeling fashions from fictional clothing brands. If you want us to use her costume, vote Yes or No. It costs 4.5 gacha pulls worth of currency, but that's relatively cheap imo.



Jaye is a 4*... I don't even know if his archetype has a name. DP drainer? A unique specialist, similar to but distinct from a fast-deploy. He is an extremely powerful 1 blocker with a somewhat shorter redeploy time (not as short as Gravel) and extremely powerful skills. He can kind of solo bosses. But this comes with the drawback of constantly draining your DP, essentially negating your passive DP gain entirely. You can still have a net positive gain with vanguards, but you either want to deploy him last or for a very short period of time. He is currently the only example of his type, but he's kind of ridiculous.

Jaye is an Ursus (polar bear) from Lungmen (Hong Kong) who works at a street stall selling fishballs. Thanks to his "resting Triad-face" and scarred body from working with knives, he often gets confused for a gangster and gets mixed up in dangerous business, up to and including some people assuming that he's the crime kingpin of Lungmen, but really he's just an ordinary dude trying to get by. He was an NPC in an early event who was so popular that they promoted him to playable later.

Talent (Anatomy Master): Jaye deals extra damage to animal-type enemies.

S1 (Shell Splitter): A short cooldown, unlimited duration buff that increases his damage and also applies Silence to the target. Unlimited duration buffs basically mean that you have to have them deployed for a certain amount of time before they get what's otherwise a completely passive ability, but in Jaye's case that carries even more weight because of his DP draining archetype. Silence is an effect that negates enemy special abilities, so for example he could prevent Crownslayer from teleporting if he hits her first. This is extremely powerful in the midgame, to the pont of trivializing a lot of things, although later enemy design often makes them immune to it so it's not very useful anymore, except for some very particular enemies that Jaye excels at dealing with.

S2 (Sashimi Platter): Short cooldown, unlimited duration buff that increases his damage and heals nearby allies (including himself) for a percentage of the damage dealt. This is absolutely insane and lets him solo bosses with low defense.



Waai Fu is a 5* Fast-Redeployment Specialist. No, her name is not a waifu joke, apparently it actually sounds pretty badass in Chinese. She's... not great, I'd call her worse than Gravel, but she does have some utility I guess.

Waai Fu is a Feline (tiger) from Lungmen (Hong Kong). She's a college student with a strong sense of justice who works part-time for a private detective agency called Lee's Detective Agency. This is another cast "team" with its own logo. I believe she's studying law, but I can't remember for sure. She also displays combat abilities that are "wildly inconsistent with her stated background" according to the recruiters at Rhodes Island. Basically she's one of those people from a kung fu flick who seems like a normal person but is secretly a martial arts master. She's good friends with Jaye, and is actually from the same event where he was introduced.

Talent (Red Browed Wing Chun): Small chance on attack to deal more damage and also cause a small knockback to the enemy. Frankly, redeploy specialists have such low attack power that I'm kind of skeptical of anything that increases their offense rather than their utility. The knockback is so small that it's more like a tiny stun that might interrupt an enemy attack animation at best. She certainly can't replace Shaw for knockback utility.

S1 (One-Inch Punch): On deployment, boosts her attack significantly and also causes her attacks to reduce enemy attack power. Like I mentioned with Mousse, there are a number of enemies you that become way more manageable with lower attack, so this is actually pretty good utility. Unlike Mousse though, she can't keep it up forever and would need to undeploy and redeploy to use it again, which makes it less reliable.

S2 (Seven-Styles Kick): On deployment, she immediately deals damage to all enemies in a cross around her landing point, and applies silence to all of them. Mostly this is an on-demand silence effect, the damage is "eh". But silence can be incredibly powerful sometimes.



Astesia is a 5* Arts Damage Guard, a higher rarity version of Mousse. Her skills have a weird defensive twist on the archetype which I'm not sure is partcularly useful, but I don't think you can go wrong with an arts guard. I wouldn't consider her a straight upgrade over Mousse though.

Astesia is a Liberi from Columbia (USA). She's an astrologer, which is a form of traditional magic from before the study of arts became scientific. While traditional magic does actually work in this setting, for the same reason that traditional medicine might occassionally stumble upon effective drugs, it apparently didn't work well enough for her to predict her sister coming down with Oripathy, which completely shattered the future she saw for herself and made her doubt in her powers. Also, it's pretty weird to be an astrologer in this setting since apparently the stars are not visible? To quote from her profile:

Dr. Kal'tsit posted:

There is theoretical value in this stargazing idea, but it has no practical application in modern science. The days when we could see the stars are long gone, and every twinkle of starlight we do get is like a stab in the gut.

Talent (Celestial Globe): Increases her attack speed every 20 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. Basically makes her better at being a long-term turret as opposed to an airdrop.

S1 (Astral Projection): Boosts both her attack and defense. It's okay, I guess.

S2 (Astral Sword): Boosts both attack and defense, increases her block to 2, and lets her hit 2 enemies at once. Basically turns her into a mini AOE guard who deals arts damage. There are certainly worse things to be.



Cliffheart isn't from the gacha, all players get her for free after playing for a week. Cliffheart is a 5* pulling specialist, like Rope. She's overall better than Rope, probably, but her basic utility as a puller is the same and she costs more DP, so unless you're using her one specific gimmick it's basically a wash.

Cliffheart is a Feline (snow leopard) from Kjerag (Scandinavian Tibet). She's actually Silverash's little sister, the youngest of three siblings. We haven't met the middle sister yet. Compared to the others, she's the baby sister with no responsibilities. She loves mountain climbing, but became infected during a climbing accident, ie: she was cut by a rock containing originium. Her condition is more or less why Silverash is involved with Rhodes Island at all. They also have some family drama, but that's best saved for the last sibling, if we ever get her.

Talent (Karlan Hunter): Increases attack and defense when not blocking enemies. You rarely if ever want a puller to be blocking anything, so it's decent.

S1 (Chain Hook): More or less the exact same skill as Rope's S1, the short cooldown bread and butter skill of a puller. It's how you pull stuff.

S2 (Binding Chains): A longer cooldown, activated pull that hits up to 3 targets and also the range extend horizontally too, allowing her to gather up enemy from different lanes. It also stuns them for 3 seconds and deals True Damage, which ignores both defense and resistance and is actually extremely rare. I don't know why Cliffheart of all people deals true damage, but it's not like her attack power is significant, so whatever. This has different pulling utility than her S1, but the longer cooldown means that you'll have to judge it on a case-by-case basis.



Hung is a 5* Healing Defender, same archetype as Spot. I assume he's generally better than Spot, but the way his healing skills work is a little different so maybe they aren't completely comparable.

Hung is a Perro from Lungmen (Hong Kong). As you might have noticed, the same races can be full furries or not just kind of arbitrarily and no one will ever comment on it. Really depends on the tastes of the artist, I suppose. He works as a security guard at the same private detective agency as Waai Fu, and is just sort of a kind-hearted goofball. Apparently he is an extremely good cook though, and could open his own restaurant if he wanted to.

Talent (Gatekeeper): Increases his defense. If he's standing with his back to a ranged tile, he heals any operators on that tile for signicantly more.

S1 (Treatment Countermeasure): A defensively charged skill, meaning that it charges by 1 each time he gets hit by an enemy. When charged, he'll heal one adjacent ally (including himself). Being defensively charged is both a blessing and a curse: on one hand it'll charge up super fast when he's being swarmed or pelted by ranged attacks, but on the other hand it means it'll do absolutely nothing when he's NOT. He can't top people off between waves, for example.

S2 (Medical Mode Countermeasure): Defensively charged, he stops attacking and goes into full medic-mode like Spot or Myrtle. He also grants an SP (Skill Point) to anyone he heals, which means their skills charge up faster. 1 SP is roughly 1 second for auto-charge skills, or 1 hit for offensively/defensively charged skills. He can't give himself SP though. Anyway, that's also a decent skill but has the same benefits and problems as his S1.

Edit:



[i]Beanstalk is a 4* Ranged Vanguard. Or... Summoning Vanguard? I don't think we have a name for it yet since she's the first one. Unlike all other vanguards, she is deployed on ranged tiles and has the range of a sniper. However, she is also our first summoner, which means that after she is deployed she adds another nameplate to our deployment list. This is her summon, which in her case can be placed on any available melee tile within her attack range. She summons what the game calls a Tactical Point, which creates a tiny baby crab on that spot with 1 block and stats similar to but slightly lower than a 2 block vanguard of the same level. The crab cannot be healed by ordinary means, but if it dies it will automatically respawn in the same position after 15 seconds. You can only place one crab spot and can only reposition it by redeploying Beanstalk entirely. Her attack is increased when hitting an enemy blocked by her summoned unit.

Beanstalk is a Rebbah (hyena, also apparently this was mistranslated in her profile) from Columbia (USA). She's a farmgirl from the countryside who has made it her mission in life to show the world that domesticated Metal Crabs can be useful for all sorts of things, from transportation to warfare. Most people think she's crazy and that that's dumb, including her family who kicked her out. So now she's a crab-breeder entrepreneur trying to make it on her own, or rather with her giant family of trained crabs that only she can tell apart. She is good friends with Vanilla, who shares her taste in cute pets.

Talent (Professional Breeder): Technically her talent is what summons and respawns the crab. I suppose future units in this archetype might have different rules for how they spawn their summoned units.

S1 (Sentinel Command): Generates DP and immediately heals the crab to full (or respawns it if it is dead). This is pretty good since it means you have an invincible blocker for the early game.

S2 ("Everyone Together!"): Generates DP and summons up to 4 additional crabs in all the spots adjacent to her Tactical Point, if there's space for them. The defense of all crabs is also increased significantly. All additional crabs will despawn when the duration expires. This could be good if you need a lot of blockers in an emergency, but it seems way more situational to me.

And that's everyone! Our roster is looking pretty huge now.





As you can see, most people who weren't voted for last time are still level 1, although I also leveled up the healers, etc, so I could better farm materials. This time around the voting is even more important though, since I'll probably be able to promote the top few candidates. As always, shout your choice in bold in the thread, up to five votes per person. The votes will be added to the same totals as the previous votes to create some kind of team inertia, and we'll see how that goes. Most of my team last time were at 2 votes so it shouldn't be too hard to overturn the status quo.

Clarste fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jul 18, 2021

Clarste fucked around with this message at 15:18 on Jul 18, 2021