They are indeed in the shop. I think I'm probably going to just use all of my shop currency to buy fates cause I'm not sure when they'll add 5 stars to the shop, but it probably won't be until the 1st year anniversary at the earliest.

Traditional aesthetics making a comeback maybe? I know China has a hanfu revival and bringing back cultural aesthetics and practices is much more common recently than before so it might be a combination of that. Either that or it's just cause it's Chinese New Years season and traditional ink paintings are in.

In Dusk's instance, she doesn't just use her sword for arts, but she also uses it for art. Every attack looks like a brush stroke full of ink.

I was just saying that for the memes, but I just think it's interesting how she's using her sword as a catalyst and how both she and Nian have used swords so far. I wonder if Nian is the one who forged it for her or it was created through different means.

If Arknights continues with bringing out Nian's siblings one after the other, then maybe we'll be seeing more sword users in different classes if they follow the same pattern shown thus far.

I just love how she uses a sword but is a caster lol

Saga looks so damn cool, I'm definitely going all in on this banner. Her trait looks really interesting too since it basically feeds other operators SP. In addition to that, her skill 2 works really well in conjunction with her trait and basically boosts how fast it can be up again.

With the skill talk out of the way, I just wanna talk about how amazing her design is cause she's in full traditional garb but with tactical geta and knee pads over her hakama. AND she's using a naginata. Like goddamn she's the coolest operator yet! Her E2 art just pushes that to the top, and her skill animations are sick. Genuinely love everything about her design.

Ohhh boy, I'm already looking forward to the next next limited banner. They just released the PV for the new New Years event in CN and I pretty much want all of the new operators?

I really like the aesthetics for the art too, it's a very traditional Chinese style that looks amazing. The new furniture set looks sick as well. I wish global can catch up with CN sooner cause I don't want to wait a few months for this event to come to global T_T

Xiao teaser came out and I'm back thinking about how sad Liyue's history is. All of the yakshas that were summoned by Zhongli are gone except for Xiao and all of it due to corruption from the monsters they were fighting to protect Liyue. Xiao himself is tormented by it since he's the last one remaining and is still protecting Liyue to this day.

Like honestly, I wanted Xiao cause I like his design, but I probably wouldn't have been so into him as a character if his backstory wasn't so sad and fucked up. There's just something about characters with tragic pasts that I always end up liking above all others. It's a shame his English voice makes him sound like an edgelord and doesn't do him justice at all. I see way too many people just think of him as that cause they play in English and that voice just makes him look dumb.

Going back to the yakshas though, I wish the red yaksha didn't die cause her design looks sick and I would've loved to pull for her. I desperately need another female character with a "cool" design that leans towards something like Beidou's design cause we're really lacking in that. Xinyan was close but her backstory didn't interest me so I don't particularly care about her...

last edited at Jan 27, 2021 4:03AM

Nice abs

If you have Lappland, she silences every enemy she's hitting so she's perfect for dealing with spiders. Either that or use fast redeploy ops to kill one, retreat, kill another before placing down your perma ops.

Do you not have decent Wanderer sets? I'm sticking with that for now + a Glad Cryo % piece with crappy sub stats I got. I would grind Cryo set of I had Mona.

I do but I'm trying to get a full cryo set for her. I'm also out of artifact fodder to actually level up my artifacts so I'm just running out of a lot of stuff ;-;

This was unexpected but really nice

4 is unlucky for both China and Japan. It's cause it sounds similar to the word for death.

Also I finally finished getting lv8 reputation in Liyue so I'm rocking the new geo wings for all my geo characters. Since all the wings we've gotten so far look like the elements we have, I've decided to match them all so my anemo characters all have the Mondstadt wings and my cryo characters all have the Dragonspine wings. They all look really good so I'm looking forward to getting the electro ones when Inazuma comes out for Beidou.

I went ahead and finished up Ganyu's quest while I was at it and it really made me like her a lot more. I wasn't very enthusiastic about her before cause we barely got to see her in the main quest line, but her struggle with her identity was really touching to see resolved. I'd love to use her more but I still got a lot of grinding to do for her artifacts.....

last edited at Jan 24, 2021 1:56AM

I'm getting another copy of Ningguang so I can get her to C2. She's my main dps so any power boost on her is good in my books.

Unreconciled Stars event give her (Keqing) some shipping material with Fischl (Amy).

As for Raiden since Inazuma has no definite release date neither does she have one as of the current moment. It could be months before she's available to roll for in-game.

Months to save then!

Honestly I'm not as tempted to pull in Genshin, and the only real "plan" I have in mind for pulling is getting every archon. The other characters I rolled for are whoever I think looks cool. It takes a while to save enough for 80 rolls for the 5 star though, so I'm gonna need to skip a lot of banners.

塞雷娅 posted:

Also speaking of the event, I'm honestly really glad the rerun events are so much more compact cause farming this event the first time around was such a pain cause it took so long to farm tickets and then using those tickets to farm ANOTHER stage to get the actual currency you need for the raffle. Especially with the infinite raffle, you needed to spend so much time just to farm it was exhausting.

I get what you mean, but idk, stages don't take that long to clear and I'm auto'ing them anyway so shrug. And not like I have new year's pots to spend or anything... I mean, it'd be my first proper lottery event in AK, so I kinda wanted to do it.

That's the downside to these rerun events. I wonder if we're gonna get another lottery event sometime cause so far ObFes is the only one. It might be another summer event or a holiday event though cause the premise behind this event was a festival where a lottery would fit as a reward mechanic.

Tbh I'm also debating whether I want to roll for Keqing... on the one hand I really don't need her AND there's a chance to get her anyways on the other rate up banners. On the other hand, she's awfully cute...

I think I'll sit on it until she actually gets here. I also gotta think about saving for Raiden since she's definitely gonna get a banner.

I on the other hand prefer that skins have no gameplay value, cos this way you're not forced to buy all of them to stay competitive.

Funny you say that cause instead of feeling like I don't need to buy all of them, my collector's spirit has been fired up and I've been buying every single skin regardless if I actually like them or not. This is also why I'm anxious to get Hibiscus's skin cause that's the only free skin I'm missing...

Also speaking of the event, I'm honestly really glad the rerun events are so much more compact cause farming this event the first time around was such a pain cause it took so long to farm tickets and then using those tickets to farm ANOTHER stage to get the actual currency you need for the raffle. Especially with the infinite raffle, you needed to spend so much time just to farm it was exhausting.

Not a mommy's girl... sure bro, keep telling yourself that :')

Besides, if I didn't buy Skadi's skin, I wouldn't have been able to do THIS.

It's funnier cause she's E0Lv1 and I'm only using her for her skin. Maybe I'll E2 her one day...

In AK, the odds are definitely better for banner rolls. Basically it's a 2% chance for a 6 star, 8% for 5 star, 50% for 4 star, and 40% for 3 stars. There's no weapon banner so you'll always get a character.

There's also 2 pity systems in place for the non-limited banners. One is that you are guaranteed at least a 5 star in your first ten pulls. The other is that after the 50th pull of not getting a 6 star, every pull after gets a 2% increase in your odds up to 100%, which equals 99 pulls in total at the unluckiest.

In the limited banners, there's a spark system where you get a token for each pull you do and you can spend them buying the rate up operators. The 6 stars cost 300 and the 5 stars cost 75. Of course, this is more for whales, but it's a stopgap in case you get really unlucky. The previous pity systems still exists for this banner too. The unspent tokens will then be converted and you can spend them buying materials.

Those are the pure gacha elements, but there's another way to get operators through a free recruitment system. You basically pick tags that you randomly get and set it for a specific time (9 hours for a chance of 3-5 stars) and then wait and see what you get. There's certain tag combos that show up that can guarantee you a 6 star or a 5 star so you have an additional chance at getting high rarity operators through that. I've personally gotten 4 6 stars from the recruitment.

Another way you can get 6 and 5 stars is for them to rotate through the shop where you can directly buy them with a currency that's equivalent to the masterless starglittter in Genshin. You can get said currency through getting 4 stars in the recruitment so as long as you save, you can just directly buy a unit.

All in all, AK is a lot more F2P friendly than most gacha games cause it provides a lot of different ways to get a guaranteed high rarity operator in a way that doesn't require getting lucky in the gacha. The only painful part is the wait, but you can beat most of the game with low rarity characters and the hardest stages only need 1 or 2 high rarities max.

On the contrary, skins are pretty much the only thing I spend prime on except for the occasional sanity refill. Skins are permanent and guaranteed while spending them on pulls means there's a chance I won't get who I want. Every non-limited operator will eventually make their way into the shop and recruitment so I just don't feel the need to rush getting them. I even bought skins for operators I don't have cause I'm confident I'll eventually get them via the shop.

Ch'en is showing up in the shop in CN soon and Magallan is being added to the recruitment pool so they're all eventually making it there. It might be a few months wait but that's totally fine imo.

On the contrary, skins are pretty much the only thing I spend prime on except for the occasional sanity refill. Skins are permanent and guaranteed while spending them on pulls means there's a chance I won't get who I want. Every non-limited operator will eventually make their way into the shop and recruitment so I just don't feel the need to rush getting them. I even bought skins for operators I don't have cause I'm confident I'll eventually get them via the shop.

Ch'en is showing up in the shop in CN soon and Magallan is being added to the recruitment pool so they're all eventually making it there. It might be a few months wait but that's totally fine imo.

Ningguang is amazing! You should definitely build her. I've been using her over literally every 5 star I have cause she's just that good. Literally the only reason I pulled for Zhongli was to make him her support slave LOL.

I'm building Ganyu now cause I have her at friendship 10 and I wanted to get others a chance to increase their friendship levels.

last edited at Jan 21, 2021 6:33PM

Rye posted:

I got lied to before though, people told me rerun skins would be cheaper lol

Aren't skins for Gummy, Provence and Platinum cheaper though?

Those are the usual prices though so nope.

^ It's been fine for me. It was slightly harder to do at expert mode and I can't do max risk, but I can manage 2800-3200 points well. I'm pretty much taking all risks except the ones that reduce skill cooldown and only taking the 300 seconds and 50% health up risks.

I haven't been able to finish building Ganyu yet so I've been using Ningguang and Razor (only for the Geo cube) as my main dps and I've been doing great.