I have some doubts about Franka's ability to feel embarassed though, particularly by anything she may have done to/with Liskarm... :v

I looked it up - apparently Vouivre is a reference/another name for Guivre, a medieval French word for creatures with serpentine bodies and dragon heads, with the word itself being the origin of “wyvern”.

I looked it up - apparently Vouivre is a reference/another name for Guivre, a medieval French word for creatures with serpentine bodies and dragon heads, with the word itself being the origin of “wyvern”.

That's fascinating, I've never seen that mythical creature in any other work of fiction. Arknights developers must have been pulling from every source they could find for their taxonomy names.

I'm really taken with the dorm furniture sets right now. They're technically useless since max ambience can be reached with any random collection of furniture, but this Lungmen dumpling house one looks so good. I stopped farming LMD to farm for furniture parts and my operators are finally living in a fashionable residence.

Medusa (Lancer)

She's actually pretty decent now, after her buff and Skadi. Too bad I don't have her.

Even before Skadi people like Wu Zetian or Ishtar (Rider) could make her better than she was. Heck even Stheno is no longer trash with her buff to divine servants (including herself) and buff removal on NP. Regardless it won't change some people's minds about them though.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/83303381

Blaze x GrayThroat

Still not Nian.

I feel like a idiot. Because whenever operator deals arts damage it's highlighted in blue, I associated text in blue as arts damage. That's why when it said Frostleaf can attack in range in blue I assumed it meant she deals arts damage. I finally realized she doesn't and that explains why her skill deals physical damage as well. facepalm

After trying a lot of setups I finally figured out how to beat AK-7. Who would have guessed, it involved starting with 2 vanguards stares. So it drops Kohl. It says rare, but is it any better than regular quest? I did run it few times today to see and dropped it roughly ever second run, but I didn't really try farming other one to have comparison. BTW. beat it with this team. Outside of Ch'en I deployed everyone at least once, so I didn't even use any 6 stars. E2 lvl 20 recommendation won't stop me! Now gotta beat chapter 5 to even unlock chance to challenging AK-8.

Also I finally checked drop rates and wow no wonder I drop 5 and 4 stars so often. 50% on 4 stars is already great, but 8% on 5 stars is amazing. Compare to FGO's 3% to drop 4 star it's like night and day. Even 2% chance for 6 star is still higher than FGO's 1% for 5 star. On that topic, I was sure that the increase of 6 star drop chance by 2% every time you won't drop 6 star was universal to all banners, not only limited to... well... limited banners. That kinda sucks, especially since there are currently only 2 limited banners in AK?

Rye posted:

Edit: I like how 50% of my friend list is missing that clue 4, Istina gave me a 2 and a 7 >_>

Yea. I finally witnessed for myself the horror of clue 4. On the other hand rn I'm again missing just clue 1 though.

myrrhmidon posted:

We need justice for 3 stars. E2 for them please Hyperglyph.

Sadly they need to give you some reason to roll for 4+ stars.

Sakura Cartelet posted:

Who cares if she's any good or not from a gameplay perspective. She's cute and that's all that matters. I mean I like trashy units like Stheno and Medusa (Lancer) in FGO as well Hinano and Emiri in Magia Record too.

I never thought Chibidusa was bad from the get go and apparently with all her buffs on JP, she's actually now a very good servant. Since when Hinano is a trash unit? Sure she isn't the strongest, but she works just fine.

last edited at Aug 6, 2020 9:46AM

On that topic, I was sure that the increase of 6 star drop chance by 2% every time you won't drop 6 star was universal to all banners, not only limited to... well... limited banners. That kinda sucks, especially since there are currently only 2 limited banners in AK?

It does apply to all banners. It just applies as separate pools, regular banners or limited banners. Just read the banner descriptions...how did you miss that?

Rye posted:

It does apply to all banners. It just applies as separate pools, regular banners or limited banners. Just read the banner descriptions...how did you miss that?

I never read banners descriptions before. Nian's was the first one I did and there it talked about limited banners, so I didn't think there was separate one for non-limited banners, but I guess it makes sense.

Because whenever operator deals arts damage it's highlighted in blue, I associated text in blue as arts damage.

Oh I never knew that. We all learn new things every day. XD

After trying a lot of setups I finally figured out how to beat AK-7. Who would have guessed, it involved starting with 2 vanguards stares.

Highly recommend two vanguard starting set-up, since it really can make life much easier in my experience. AK-7 can for sure be beaten with only E1s, and the Chinese anniversary stream showed the staff(?) clearing it with only 3*s.

So it drops Kohl. It says rare, but is it any better than regular quest?

If you look at Penguin Stats and sort by ascending sanity per drop, AK-7 seems to have better drop rates than the best permanent stage farming location, 6-11.

Regarding the event, I am happy they made it so easy to complete, but I wonder why they didn't extend the number of rewards. They must have known most players would be done with the current amount within a few days to a week. Wouldn't have minded getting something more, even if it was low tier materials.

riverFlower posted:

Oh I never knew that. We all learn new things every day. XD

Yea, they always (I think) highlight special traits. Slow is also in blue. I just saw arts damage the most, so that was what stuck to me x3

Highly recommend two vanguard starting set-up, since it really can make life much easier in my experience.

Yea, I do it for almost all quests, unless it's really tight. I did it here at first, but then I was overrun, because I wasn't dealing enough dmg so I switched to starting with snipers and beginning was going well, but I couldn't deploy operators fast enough to both hold the left side and keep Defense Crushers in check, so after many trials and errors I finally went back to opening with vanguards. First with 1 and later with 2.

If you look at Penguin Stats and sort by ascending sanity per drop, AK-7 seems to have better drop rates than the best permanent stage farming location, 6-11.

I see. Good to know! Also thanks! It's a really handy site ;3

Regarding the event, I am happy they made it so easy to complete, but I wonder why they didn't extend the number of rewards.

Yea, I'm wondering the same thing. It kinda feels...small? Like there wasn't that much rewards or things to do. I think I cleared the ladder in first 5 days or less...

last edited at Aug 6, 2020 8:50PM

On the Chinese server, the Ancient Forge event was only 1 week, which was then extended to 2 weeks for the Global servers. The same thing happened with the last event that used the same format, Operational Intelligence. I guess they wanted to make sure everyone was able to get the rewards, even if they couldn't play all the time - maybe that was something players complained about when they originally ran? In any case, I also would've liked more rewards lol.

Also, here's a short animation featuring Grani x Skadi with unrequited Specter x Skadi. Apparently the dialogue/background comes from a het anime called White Album 2, hence Skadi's male voice. Comments are pretty funny here.

last edited at Aug 6, 2020 9:15PM

As a Specter x Skadi shipper, seeing Specter get White Album'd hurts. But seeing this is Specter we're talking about, she'll probably go full psycho nun after XD

Yeah, personally speaking I'm fine with Grani x Skadi but I think I like Carol x Grani more. Now if only more people drew that ship...

I do like Specter x Skadi too, but that's more based on the really good fanart I've seen of it. I'm really just waiting for the inevitable Abyssal Hunters event that will explore their past relationship - or at least give them more interactions.

Poor Carol. Forgotten. I do hope if ever Grani's event reruns, there will be more spotlight on Carol or possibly, playable too. I mean if Fillet/Jaye can become playable...

last edited at Aug 7, 2020 6:01AM

I mean if Fillet/Jaye can become playable...

TBF Mr. Totally-Not-Former-Triad-Goon clearly has the skills for it whereas Carol by all accounts is a buck civilian with zero combat ability, if now a plucky one.

Highly recommend two vanguard starting set-up, since it really can make life much easier in my experience.

I honestly just keep Vigna in most of my teams. Texas talent helps too, that combo helps if I can't deploy fast enough. Throw in Siege/Myrtle if I need more DP.

TBF Mr. Totally-Not-Former-Triad-Goon clearly has the skills for it whereas Carol by all accounts is a buck civilian with zero combat ability, if now a plucky one.

Hah! If Sora can just sing in battle, Carol can just cook/serve tea mid fight, not to mention Gummy.

last edited at Aug 7, 2020 9:04AM

It took me until now, but I finally read through the event story in full and it's seriously making me curious about just what Nian is supposed to be. Also whatever connection her race has with Abyssals? And Lava being as old as Closure??? That was something that genuinely surprised me cause I was under the impression that Lava and Hibiscus were pretty young. I shouldn't have been too surprised, considering Sarkaz are supposed to be demons. This does bring into the legitimacy of Lava's files though. There's a lot hidden about her that we don't know considering she only has 2 archive files as a 3 star.

Also I hope we get more Nian x Lava fanart in the future. I think it's really funny how Nian, the 6 star limited operator who's from a mysterious race with incomprehensible strength latched onto Lava, the 3 star operator who's still learning how to control basic arts.

Ok, I'm confused. So I promoted Jessica to E2 and even lvl'ed her to lvl 15 as well as give her first skill M1, so you'd think she's even stronger now and would make clearing AF-7 even easier, yet despite never before losing when auto-deploying (and I farmed stage quite a bit), every since I promoted her, I'm always losing and I'm lost why. I'd understand if her DP cost increased, but it didn't... In fact it kinda feels like she deals less damage now.

last edited at Aug 8, 2020 12:07PM

The problem is the DP and stats increasing, it will mess up the timings of your auto levels.

At E1 lvl 60 her stats are:
1108 HP
389 ATK
130 DEF

At E2 lvl 15 her stats are:
1151 HP
406 ATK
135 DEF

That doesn't make any sense though. Her DP doesn't increase so that's not a issue. I was already struggling with damage to begin with, so mobs were slowly pilling up, until I'd put out my second DPS that would clear it together with Jessica. Before they would, they were getting dangerously low, but they'd always pull it off. It isn't the case where I need to kill enemy at precise timing or need them for my on-attack/hit operators to charge or something. What I need is raw damage, so E2 Jessica and lvling her up, should make this run more reliable, not *un*reliable.

It's like saying you have a run you always clear with operator that has 100 damage, but once you increase it to 120 it suddenly always fall, because they deal more damage?????

You upgraded her skill which affects the timing and damage, which can change quite a lot in auto mode

last edited at Aug 8, 2020 3:47PM by

I know. It doesn't in this run. I have other auto run that can get messed up because of timing, so I'm aware of that. As I said there's no timing whatsoever in this. You fight possessed solder that regenerates so you need more damage. She wasn't killing them fast enough before. In fact, she seems to be killing them slower than before. I watched this fight like 6 times at this point, so I'm sure what I'm talking about. Mobs she used to kill before, now she doesn't which makes them pill more than before, so when white caster shows up, he moves pass first vanguard, so when I deploy my second DPS they're no longer in range, so they survive and together with other caster kill everyone.

Auto-deploy can get screwy if you promote your operators, especially if you barely managed to clear a level previously. It is weird that DPS seems to be problem in this case, though. The best advice I can give would be to just clear it again normally, or just take over from auto-deploy where the run fails.

What confuses me the most was that once I managed to clear it, it was a very reliable clear that never once failed me in like 20 times I run it, so the fact now it always fail after increasing my DPS is just bizarre to me. But yea, it's a pain, but I was just considering running it myself again, though from what I watched it looks like if I'll do it exactly as I did it before, It'll simply fail again.

last edited at Aug 8, 2020 4:37PM

I'm confusion. So I tried doing it again myself. I was doing everything exactly the same way. I forgot to deploy Gravel to cover for wraths, but other than that Jessica was dealing damage just fine and it'd proceed just like it before I promoted her. So I left and instead of playing it again, this time without messing up, I decided to run auto again, to compare it again after freshly seeing it the way it's supposed to go and see if it fails again. It played exactly the same, but this time Jessica was dealing damage fine and cleared the mobs as intended...

I can't explain it other than there was some kind of bug with her damage or more likely skill, because of mastery, that reset once I played the mission manually once.

^ It's probably a bug, you should report that so they hopefully fix it in a future maintenance update.

Also looks like they're finally rerunning events in CN. They're rerunning the summer event, Heart of Surging Flame, but it looks like it's only going to be a lightweight version of the actual event. From what I can tell based off the event details + dev updates, they're going to be doing all reruns in a similar way.

What they're doing in this rerun:
1. If you already cleared these stages before, you won't gain any originite upon completion again. That's only available to people who haven't cleared the event before.
2. The infinite lotto is gone.
3. They're adding a special store for people who've already cleared the event that they can exchange event currency for.
4. They're rerunning all skins that were available during the first event in this + adding new ones.
5. They're treating this event as a warm-up event for the new events coming out after.
6. They added new operators and skins in this specific rerun.
7. After backlash, the devs said they will not be adding new operators in the future reruns.

So to summarize, all future reruns will be treated as warm-ups between major events and have decreased rewards from the first time that event ran. The main goal is to let new players get the "main rewards" that they missed out on like getting the event operator and event skins etc.

Personally I really like how they're doing the rerun because it gives new players a chance for the major event rewards they missed while not forcing old players to refarm. This also won't affect events like Grani's event where the actual farming is through map drops so it won't piss anyone off who was looking forward to the amazing drop rates for loxic kohl and grindstones. Kinda wish they didn't add new skins though since you can't get originite from reclearing the event so you'll need to buy premium currency to get them. Not very f2p friendly but... I'm not too mad about it since skins are just cosmetic items in the first place.