Sure! I've been doing the same and I can recommend some stuff too but it's gonna take a hot second for me to actually write it all out. I've also been soaking in stories for half a year and there's a lot of good ones out there.

Finally did all the chapter 7 stages. The "BBQ till they die" strategy working amazing as usual, and it's even better since I M3'ed Saria's S3 for the last CC. Patriot literally gets melted so fast from it that it's kinda insane.

Speaking of the BBQ strat, it looks like the newest CC uses it for high risk runs with the full fire team of Ifrit, Eyja, and Surtr. Makes me even more excited for Surtr banner cause I really want her to complete the team.

Still haven't been reading any of the story though, but that's just cause I've been lazy. I'm gonna have to just find time to sit down and read through all of the stuff I've put off since Wolumonde. From what I hear though, seems the OF rerun has some more abyssal hunter lore with the new story Thorns is in. Out of all the factions, the abyssal hunters are the ones I'm most curious about so I'm really looking forward to when we get a pure abyssal hunter event.

Huh, idk why I've been so lucky in AK, but I got Thorns after 40 rolls. Since Phantom banner, I've gotten a total of 5 rate up 6 stars and all of the rolls adding up is 100. I'm guessing this means it's gonna leech my luck from Genshin or something and it'll take me 180 to get Xiao :v

Keqing is pronounced Ke-ching. In Chinese, the q is pronounced with a ch sound. Slightly fitting since Keqing looks rich and she's a Qixing.

Haven't checked forums in a while but remember how I said I was skipping the Ganyu banner? Well I lied.

Qilin are basically dragons and I love dragons too much to skip her... Now I just gotta grind Cryo Regisvines and Leyline Blossoms for exp books to get her up to speed. Also decided that now that I have a proper main dps 5 star, I'm gonna use a whale team of all 5 stars.

Ganyu is hilariously overpowered so I'm gonna run her with a complete set of the hydro artifact set and use Tartaglia to proc frozen effects for her so she can do even more dps. I'll also be using Venti and Jean again after all these years... they're my first 5 stars and also my first 10 friendship characters so I've pretty much benched them since getting Ningguang. Now I gotta farm proper artifact sets for all 4 of them since I pretty much focused on my geo team and didn't pay attention to anyone else.

Ganyu's banner has been revealed. It will have Noelle, Xingqiu, and Xiangling as the 4 stars.

Well looks like I'm definitely skipping this :')

My advice on who to pick would be any of the ones who aren't included in the recruitment pool or the store. Blaze is pretty much the must pick cause she's the best AoE guard in the game. Other than her, Mostima would be a good option cause she hasn't shown up in shop yet.

Nice

Finally E2'ed all of my 6 stars. Only took an arm and a leg but at least that's over with. I now have a full screen of E2 6 stars :D

The next thing is to M3 at least one skill of all of them.........................

Wow, a lot of stuff went down here since I last read it. I do want to add my two cents here that workplace harassment is actually something that's become a bigger problem that's being paid attention to in recent years in pretty much all of the East Asian countries so I'm not so sure about the "progressive" claim. No matter what though, abuse of power in relationships (I'm using the broad term and not the romantic version) where there's a power imbalance is never "progressive." The fact that this work didn't try to portray it as a bad thing and as something that's supposed to be funny already takes away any kind of progress the author could have tried to convey. If it was satirical then sure maybe, but this work didn't come off as satire nor did it pull off the subversive trope it was trying to.

The problem with what the author was trying to do here was that they wanted to subvert an already subverted trope. There's a reason why it was subverted in the first place so if you reverse that then it ends up falling flat and leaving a bad taste in people's mouths. The subverted trope being the boss x maid relationship where you expect the boss to be the one with the upper hand but then get "surprised" that the maid is the one who calls the shots. If you reverse that, then it just becomes workplace harassment and coercion so that's why a lot of people dislike what the one-shot portrayed. There's an unfortunate reality we live in where people with money can get away with a lot of things and a lot of people don't like being reminded of that.

Why'd this feel bittersweet...

^ I have an entirely different view. Their voice lines is one thing, but everything in their story and from overworld stuff is another.

Ningguang makes it a point that she does deals with Beidou and NOT the Crux, and even says she prefers doing business with her cause of her personality. If you explored the Jade Chamber, she also keeps a model ship that's a "gift from the Crux" in her office. She only deals with the Crux through Beidou so guess who gave her the ship?

There's also NPCs that say Beidou won against Ningguang in chess so we know they do things like play chess together. Another thing to note is the NPC said the shocking thing here is that Beidou dared to win against Ningguang.

Pretty sure this is a case of both people hiding their likes for each other. I think Ningguang is hiding it more but based on her actions, she doesn't seem like she actually dislikes Beidou at all.

I think of it like Ningguang begrudgingly likes Beidou despite how different she is to her.

Also idk about exes since the reason Ningguang seems angry with Beidou is cause she keeps breaking the rules and needs to be fined all the time. Ningguang is a very strict rule follower so she's just annoyed Beidou keeps messing around in Liyue despite having the adoration of many.

The trope for them is pretty much like class president x delinquent if we want to simplify it.

last edited at Jan 2, 2021 9:33AM

Best Genshin ship \o/

Orca x shark surprisingly really cute

Honestly it's kinda funny how Kal is so OP but the other OP operators lore wise turn out to not live up to what they should be. Examples being Nian and Mostima, two people who should be monsters yet they both don't actually fight at their top form. On a side note, I wonder if Mostima has any relation to the species Nian is cause she also has a dragon-like behemoth in her E2 art. It's a physical manifestation too and not an aura thing like with Ch'en or Bagpipe.

There's so much mystery involving Mostima that I wish they'd do another event centered around her and Exusiai but focusing on Laterano and what exactly happened to turn her into a "fallen" angel.

Was Aak better than Nian?

I would say yes as in he's much more unique than Nian where for defenders, you pretty much just take Saria and Hoshi and that's it, at least for stuff like CC. People don't use Nian because her niche skills don't have any use when more firepower = better. With Aak, you can at least use him in boss stages where you want to demolish the boss with any ground unit you want (or ranged if you're using Shining).

It also doesn't help that using defenders isn't something you do endgame with the plethora of guard options that let you kill everyone before you need to worry about block count. Saria is pretty much the only defender you ever "need" since her kit is just a 2 in 1 deal with some added on traits that make her the best healing defender.

You never really want a "pure" class type for 6 stars because there's already that option in 3 and 4 stars so you always have to look at their additional skill and Nian's is just not useful since +1 block count sucks. Ironically though, she's great for buff army teams WITH Aak because she can do the same thing Shining does with her skill 3 and increase defense. The two roles people use for her are pretty much just defense booster or 6 star Gravel and it's usually better to just use Gravel since she's cheaper and you can redeploy her fast.

last edited at Jan 1, 2021 3:29PM

This video made me seriously consider putting resources into Ambriel... When they said her range is "global" they meant she can snipe people all the way in the void lol

Och! I remembered everyone talking about Mudrock, I must have completely forgot/miss Rosmontis. Welp, I guess it's time for me to start seriously saving up. From what I looked at her, she looks pretty interesting. She's similar hybrid Sniper like Executor and I like those unique operators.

Tbf, Mudrock low-key feels more useful than Rosmontis since she's basically an unkillable tank who also does big damage. Rosmontis is a great sniper but she only hits ground units and doesn't fit on as many maps as Mudrock does. Honestly feels like all of the 6 stars that accompany a limited 6 star always feels slightly more useful i.e. with Weedy being an absolute unit of a pusher specialist and Mudrock being Hellagur but buffer, tankier, and can block more enemies.

last edited at Jan 1, 2021 12:07PM

Pretty sure it's Blemishine cause her hair is longer than Nearl.

It's funny cause Fire Fram's login event isn't even finished yet xD

May or may not have spent everything I've saved up on E2ing all these operators. Ended up running out of LMD with Aak so now it's time to save up again. This is, BTW, with spending 20 OP on sanity refills for chip farming + red ticket farming. 3 million LMD down the drain... and all of my gold and super gold EXP records are gone... It's back to the life of a broke doctor again...

Also on another note I decided to do singles on the Hoshi/Aak banner to try and get Broca and I did it! Ended up unlocking the 130 unique operators achievement with him too so new HUGE medal. It's the same size as the ones you get from getting all medals in Pyrite and Suzuran event, so it's really big.

Probably gonna do the new chapter now since I wanted to finish E2ing Phantom at least before I touched it. Surely with my army of E2s the chapter should be a piece of cake? I even E2'ed Amiya for easy kill on Patriot.

last edited at Jan 1, 2021 9:29AM

random posted:

I mean tbf the Arknights world-setting in general - or at least the parts we get to see onscreen - is pretty much a Triple-Shot Depresso with a large topping of Bleak.

That is... surprisingly aptly way to put it...

I like Rosmontis so far. If they'd ever add her, I'd actually roll for her. Also I just cleared 7-2 and now I can get behind Ch'en. She finally felt human to me.

Well good news then! She's the next limited operator and Murdock is the one who's gonna be on the same banner like with Weedy.

The comment section ended up more entertaining to read than the actual manga lol

....huh. So I only did 33 pulls and got both Weedy and W and also pot 2 Elysium. I genuinely don't know how to feel cause I thought it would take way more... It took me over 100 pulls to get Nian so the fact I still have a 10 pull ticket left over AND 40k orundum left makes me feel a little complicated.

Oh well, guess I'll just use it on Thorns and Surtr. The unfortunate part of being lucky is that I have to farm so many chips for all of the 6 stars I just got. I still haven't even promoted Phantom to elite 1 so it's gonna be a while of farming for me. The dumb part here is that I have 3 million LMD and all of the mats saved up but the only thing I'm missing are chips.

Also spent money and bought Blaze so I'm probably going to promote Elysium first, then Blaze, and then we'll see from there.

Jeff Williams and Casey Lee Williams made a song for Arknights?? Link

Genuinely didn't expect to see these names for Arknights. If anyone doesn't know, these two are the ones famously known for creating music for RWBY.

Hypergryph continues to look more like a music company LOL. Also the MV and the special we got keeps making me think we're going to get an anime...

I think there's definitely a lot of potential for Ningguang x Beidou. It feels like a situation where they have some rivalry while still acquiesing with each others quirks and even enjoying them. There's people who see the voice lines and think they don't get along but I think they have a lot more affection based on their actions. You might have missed it but Ningguang also keeps a ship present from the Crux in her office, and we know it's Beidou she interacts with and not the Crux.

The voice lines are said directly to the Traveler, something that needs to be kept in mind. I don't think either of them would directly tell the Traveler anything deeper about their relationship and what they say is more perfunctory in my opinion.

In my headcanon, I think Ningguang definitely likes Beidou but she hides it, hence Beidou doesn't think she even likes her. Beidou also seems to like her but I don't think she realizes it, which makes sense since their stations are very far removed from each other. In modern terms, it's like a CEO x gang leader since pirates are basically sea gangs. There's a lot of potential with this kind of ship so I'm glad a lot of people seem to like it.

last edited at Dec 26, 2020 10:08PM