Bruh, the Azhdaha fight legit hard though. It's probs the hardest weekly boss we have currently cause of its massive HP and tankiness in addition to huge AoEs and constant attacks. It's like a combination of Andrius and the big geovishap dragon elite boss.

Also speaking of Yanfei, I lucked out and got her on my first ten roll so no more rolling for me till tomorrow (in Arknights).

Another thing, is it just me or did Zhongli's story quest feel like being a third wheel to a reunion between old lovers who had to separate or some shit like bruh that was gay.

EDIT: This might sound dumb but Chinese poems really hit different when you hear them in Chinese. That one part in Zhongli's story quest when the guy said: All powers under heaven, rise and fall of land and sea... A star appears within the wild... a sun ascends as bright as... jade... That shit really hit different with the Chinese dub, also that part in the special animation at the end was the same.

last edited at Apr 29, 2021 8:06AM

I was gonna wait until the datamine on the upcoming CN event before posting about it, but the recent teaser for Skadi alter seem to confirm a theory I had. Getting excited for this.

Dialogue between Skadi alter and the Doctor(?):

"I've been waiting for you, Doctor. I've waited you for far, far too long, I even forgot why I am waiting for you here... but none of that matters. None of that matters much anymore."

I call it "The Corrupting Heart". It had Skadi's appearance, but it isn't her. Fate mocked the failure of our civilazation with ruins, and now it made this organism appear before me, insulting our end.

Addtionally, this is Skadi alter's "drop down" animation. She just warps in. I've been suspecting that Abyssals are Aegirians corrupted by the Abyss. And it seems that's what happened or almost happened to Skadi. Notably, she seems to have an actual tail now. Given that possession seems to be a thing in Arknights, Skadi alter may not be Skadi at all or at least she's not alone in that body.

One more thing, unrelated to the Abyssals but another grim note, from Eunectes skin: "Gavial, I will protect Rhodes Island in your stead." WHAT HAPPENED TO GAVIAL?! But seems to be expected since it's a Bloodline of Combat skin. Apparently, Beagle's Bloodline skin also has an implied death of either hers or Fang's?

YEAH I SAW ALL OF THAT. Really concerned for anyone who's getting an Alter version in the future cause Hypergryph is not at all afraid of writing bad ends for the operators we have.

I really wanted a Shining Alter where she's a guard but I feel like if we get that version, the backstory would be something like: Nearl and/or Nightingale died and she's picking up her sword again because she feels like her healer stint was a massive failure.

EDIT: Good news about the Skadi Alter thing! This is what Lowlight said about her in the stream fully translated:
Host: Then, what's this about Skadi the Corrupted Heart?

Lowlight: Well, this is one of the possibilities of Skadi's future. It's going to sound a little dark, but as we can see from her art, a hidden shadow has become much more clear, especially in her E2 art, you can see an unidentified creature appearing behind her. The Skadi you are seeing now is her, but at the same time it's not her. What did I mean by this? Please find out more in the upcoming event. But watch out, she may be in fact luring you in to turn into her kin...

So basically it might literally just be an alternate Skadi.

last edited at Apr 29, 2021 8:20AM

With the PVs they make that are genuinely good, I still find it incomprehensible that they use those shit ass pulling videos from random Youtubers for their ads. Like just use one of the PVs as an ad instead of using a way inferior video of some dude pulling a 6 star and talking about waifus. I really feel like Yostar is trynna sabotage Arknights success every time they do that shit.

That leap in logic is me

Ah, so I am not the only one who saw that video and thought "wtf is this???" Good thing I never got into Honkai lol.

You summed up everything perfectly ^

Some additional things that they talked about: 2 5 star vouchers, a ticket that lets you directly E2 any 5 star, name change voucher being added permanently with the first one being free and every one after is $5, and they're resetting the originium packs so you can get double for your 1st purchase again. There's also a login event where you mine orundum? Oh yeah, I almost forgot but they're adding new nendoroids of a few more operators.

Anyways all the stuff they're adding is hype as fuck. Only 7 more months until 2nd anniversary for global :')

EDIT: AND ONE FINAL THING: Surtr's skin looks hot as fuck, like goddamn wtf. I know her personality is shit but her looks and aesthetic are fire.

last edited at Apr 24, 2021 11:23AM

An article from 2000? Yeah the rampant and very obvious biphobia in it makes complete sense.

Huh, what's with the special appreciation pack that Arknights just sent in the mail today? They gave a bunch of stuff plus 3000 orundums. Did something happen or was there a notice or something about it?

More Zhongli for me :p

JK, I already have him and do not want any more. I'll just hope for Genshin's version of Yae Sakura and Raiden instead since I genuinely have not felt very moved by the designs for any of the new female characters that Mihoyo has released so far. It's weird cause it's not like Mihoyo doesn't have character designs I like, since I'm still shaken by the Honkai character designs that make me want to reinstall the game... I'll just wait for the day when Fu Hua eventually gets added to Genshin as a character xd Hopefully it's not that male character who has a similar theme to her Phoenix form that has been teased before...

last edited at Apr 18, 2021 9:54PM

That new character though... looks like she didn't show up in the EN stream. She looks really cool, I think I'm definitely gonna skip and wait for HER banner.

See... that Childe was actually his C1 cause I've had him since the first time around... He's also already at lv80 since I was debating whether to actually use him or not and ended up benching him to use Ningguang instead. I just feel like it's a waste if I don't use him at this point since he's C1. Besides that, I decided to make Ganyu's team a melt comp instead so having Childe there to do burst vaporize reactions just makes the team stronger.

Okay I actually played through the event and wow I really love how Arknights always has such interesting add-ons for their event pages. Like the news articles that go along with the event are really interesting. They read like genuine gossip pages and/or sports news that even have ads on them. Like bruh, that's cool as heck.

Speaking of Blemishine x Whislash, one of the news articles had a link to another article that said "Late Night Bar Visit, Intimate Relationship?! The "Family Secrets" of the Nearl Sisters and Zofia." Like... damn, even in-universe people think there's something up with them.

Yeah idk what is wrong with my luck but I got Magallan 2 rolls into the Blemishine banner. Did another 10 roll cause I just wanted to get Bubble for her base skill and got Aosta so looks like I'm just gonna collect 'em all at this point. I'm only missing like, 6 6 stars and 9 5 stars before I have every operator in the game so far. It's funny cause I'm not even whaling for anything and all of the money I've used on this game have mostly been for skins.

??? I was 40 in and got another 5 star. I just wanted to do another 10 roll to try and get Fischl and ended up getting her AND Childe. Literally why.

With that said, I guess I have no choice now but to make him Ganyu's sub dps...

Well I pulled 3 Rosarias and a Keqing. No Fischl so that's a bust but hey, at least I got the one other 5 star I wanted in this game. This also means I'm guaranteed to get the next rate up 5 star so I'm pretty happy about that. I'll probs skip Eula then since Keqing satisfies my need for a new 5 star and she's a different element from all my other main dps characters. Now it's time to save for Raiden for real.

The ending felt pretty abrupt but I get why it had to be rushed. I enjoyed the speedrun though since everything ended happily and the premise and setting were great.

I'm rolling on Rosaria banner for Fischl tbh. I'm 2 cons away from max so I'd like to try for her to unlock that extremely OP 6th cons. It's also a way to increase my pity for whoever I decide to roll for next which probably will be Eula.

Speaking of Eula, I saw her gameplay footage and her kit looks boring af, but I don't have a claymore DPS so I don't care that much. I just haven't rolled on any banners since Xiao and I'm raring to pull again.

Oh hey, Hypergryph made a site for all their music so you can listen to all of the OSTs and EPs they made. Monster Siren also looks like it's supposed to be lore accurate so that's cool. Even the contact information says #Middle of Nowhere, Terra.

Huh. So idk what the heck is going on but I've been getting the rate up 6 stars in like, under 30 pulls for the past few banners and it's low-key scaring me.

Got Surtr in literally 16 pulls. Guess I'm saving the rest of my resources for the Mudrock banner since that was incredibly painless. No April but she's not exactly high priority in my eyes so I'll abstain.

I finally got a new laptop to play Genshin on, and boy has that made everything much easier. Besides that, I also fully equipped my Xiao team and almost done with my Ningguang team. I can literally destroy everything with my Xiao team in like, one rotation now and can destroy everything even without using his burst since Xingqiu + Fischl are pretty OP supports.

I was waiting to do the Hu Tao event and like, all of the hangout events after getting a computer so I finally got those done. Hu Tao's story was pretty interesting and she's hilarious. The story event almost made me regret not pulling for her, but alas I saw the leaks for that new cryo claymore user and now I really don't mind skipping. With how far away Raiden feels, I'm gonna just aim for Eula next and make a physical team with her since her talents seem to point to that build. Of course, that's gonna be far down the line since I haven't even touched my Ganyu team yet and I only just finished building my Xiao team with adequate artifacts but not like, the best ones since I'm not trying to be picky about my artifacts right now.

As for the hangouts, I've only done Barbara's so far but I really like the feel of them. Hoping they add Ningguang and Beidou's next cause I really want to see some story with them.

You know I hate omegaverse as much as the next person, but a story having this setting doesn't necessarily have to be problematic if done right. For example I read a Chinese omegaverse story where it was set in ancient China with A/B/O elements to justify a female emperor and it was surprisingly really well done. It just depends on how the particular author decides to use the setting and whether they stick to the standard ways people write it or do reversals on what's commonly seen in the genre. Futa also doesn't necessarily need to be a staple and can instead be like, pheromones that you emit. I've read a few omegaverse stories where the female alphas don't get any extra bits but they can use their pheromone that comes from their neck glands in place of any of that.

Omegaverse as a setting is pretty malleable imo, and doesn't have to have the negative aspects of it that's commonly seen. It doesn't have to be rapey, and you can have in universe laws and shit made to protect omegas when they're in heat and inhibitors and things like that. It really just depends on what the author wants to portray.

Trimmed medals basically just look shinier if you do a hidden objective of it. Like so:

EDIT: Now that I looked through all of the medals again, it's not so much "shiny" as it is making it more silver. Tbh some of the medals looked better before being trimmed cause they had actual color to them.

last edited at Mar 2, 2021 2:21PM

New trailer for the Rainbow Six collab: here. I did a double take when they started speaking in English but it makes sense since they're probably not gonna get new voice actors right?

All of the crossover ops look sick, but what I'm REALLY looking forward to is new Schwarz skin. I like, never use Schwarz anymore but I will after I get this skin once it comes around.

Ayano acting sus...

I don't know about you guys, but I spent starglitter on the Blackcliff Pole. Also somehow got Jean with my 5 shop fates on the standard banner.... Can't say I'm mad about that at all, now her E does even MORE damage.