#(( also I just need to find a good phys attacker ))

[akechisjustic]

... Look even if the game guides say to swap out naho's weaknesses for anything other than a dark weakness do you know how many dark type attacks this boss uses. I'm still going to be using base naho's weakness, because that's what makes this fun. :3c

[cerastes]

Are there any notable supporters you reccomend? I kinda ignore the class except for gnosis (and I do use scene and deep color in IS a bit) and I wonder if I'm actually sleeping on some fun units.

YOU CAME TO THE RIGHT NEIGHBORHOOD, MOTHER FUCKER, I LOVE SUPPORTERS.

Suzuran - 6* Decel Binder. The moral of Arknights is that children make excellent soldiers, and Suzuran proves this. Her two Talents are really good, as she serves as an incredibly potent SP accelerator for Supporters (+0.4 extra SP per second, so Supporters will charge 40% faster, herself included), and all enemies suffering from Slow (the actual status effect Slow, not the movement speed reduction effects one can find on Manticore or Chung the Hung, for example) in her range are also inflicted with 20% Fragile (so, they take 20% extra Phys, Arts and True damage from all sources). It doesn't have to be Slow inflicted by her, any Slow will do, so Angelina's S2 machinegun Slow will render an enemy vulnerable to an ass kicking quite effectively, as will Podenco's S2, and any source of Slow additional to Suzuran herself. S2 gives her an extra target on every attack, 2 extra targets with Masteries, alongside a minor Attack buff and, more importantly, infinite duration, meaning she can control more enemies at once and better prevent Slow Dilution (what I call when you Slow an enemy, then the next enemy passes them, making them the next target, and so on, diluting damage and clustering them; this isn't necessarily bad but it can be undesired depending on you strategy). Her spotlight stealer, however, is her S3, which expands her range, provides strong passive healing (so unhealables can be healed), doubles her Fragile Talent (40%), and Slows everything in range. Gnosis Fragile is bigger (50%) but he only maintains it in comparatively shorter bursts, Suzuran's S3 last 35 whopping seconds, and enemies that are Slow-immune are far fewer than Freeze-immune. This section is particularly big because, yeah, Suzuran just really does that much, she combos VERY well with other Supporters, can be slotted in any team, and just generally works, I'm not even a Suzuran fan, she's just that jacked.

Podenco - 4* Decel Binder, real name GODenco, also slots easily into any team, can switch to healing on her S1, or provide bursts of Silence, AoE Arts damage and Slow on good upkeep with her S2. She also provides a minor passive buff to other Supporters. If you need to Silence things, you think of the best Silencer, Lappland, but sometimes you need to Silence a LOT of things, enough that Lapp might get overwhelmed, well, that's when you use GODenco S2 and suddenly that entire cluster of 8 exploding spiders won't go boom no more. She's really good for Slow Dilution because of her single target into AoE skill, so she combos really good with AoE hitters like Artillerymen, Fortresses, Chain Casters, Qiu Bai S2, etc.

Shamare - 5* Hexer, a good execution support, as she applies 30% Fragile to enemies in range under 40% HP. Her main hat trick, however, is her S2, her signature Cursed Doll. At S2M3, the Cursed Doll, which you deploy on the field and it affects its tile and the 8 surrounding tiles, will provide an absolutely ungodly debuff of -50% ATK and DEF to all enemies in said range. One of the rare ATK% debuffs in the game, and in my opinion the best, it'll make even Gopnik hit like a wet noodle. What's more, since it's not an active skill, the moment you drop your Cursed Doll, Shamare will immediately begin charging the next one! With a charge of 30 and a doll timer of 15 seconds, her true charge time is 15 seconds. Basically, you can cycle 15 seconds of regular enemy stats and 15 seconds of halved enemy stats. This is legitimately insane. Since Shamare's stats are also unimportant, you can just leave her at E2Lv1 (unless you want her Module, which imo is not worth the lv2+ and I'd only get the lv1 if you really like her) so she can be a cheap and powerful investment.

U-Official - NUMERO UNO CAMPEAO DA PENTA

Quercus - 5* Abjurer. I'll keep it simple here: Her healing with Module is bonkers, and she provides Shelter (damage reduction%) to units in range above 70% HP, 60% with Module Lv3. S1 is her permanent Healer mode, toggable on a long cooldown, while S2 is her burst healing window skill, notable in that it provides SP to healed units throughout its duration. Quercus is sleeped upon, she's a REALLY strong Supporter that provides SP, healing and bulk.

Orchid - 3* Decel Binder. I include her here if you want to play Integrated Strategies, because she's always a good free pick there. She's the Slower that Slows.

Roberta - 4* Artificer. I include her here because my stream audience will disembowel me and chain my flayed corpse outside the Museum of Modern Arts if I don't, she's my meme unit. THOUGH, her Shield-providing, DEF enhancing tools can come in handy.

Valarqvin - 5* Ritualist. The IS4 free unit. Significantly stronger in IS4 due to built-in Necrosis Damage on autoattacks, but even outside of IS4, she can be useful for bursting or key enemy elimination with S2, as Necrosis is a strong effect with a built in, decaying ATK% debuff (again, rare) and unmitigated DoT (total of 12000 damage over 15 seconds, 800 dmg per second). Nothing so far in the game resists this, so go ham.

Angelina - 6* Decel Binder. Angelina's whole thing is that she's not a standout unit in any regard, but she can support practically every team, can so strong sustained damage and Slow against single targets with S2, strong multitarget Slow and reduced Weight for Shifting with S3, and passively increases party ASPD and gives them passive healing (works on unhealables). Angelina is kind of like a crowbar or a length of rope in that she's as useful as you can be creative with her, never as a stand out, but as a good brick in the overall house.

Ling - Limited 6* Summoner. Kind of an obligatory mention, but basically, God Mode. One of the gamebreakers, as she can produce 4-Block replenishable immensely powerful summons with multitarget equal to block, Arts damage, and damaging auras. Yeah. Even without that monster of an S3, she can sub Burst Damage and crowd control really well with S2. Her applications are insane, she's so strong that we can be here all day, so we won't do that, she's a very well documented unit.

Skadi the Corrupting Heart - Limited 6* Bard. Again, another well documented unit, but she can basically E3 your units with the sheer stat heft she provides through her S2 buff, can deploy an extension to this range with her Seaborn Summon, and if you really want to go ham, she can enter Microwave Mode with S3 so True Damage cook the shit out of anything, in addition to providing a really big Attack bonus to units in range while at it. Well documented unit so I'll keep it brief but yeah, godlike unit.

There's a few more, like Proviso and Scene, but that's enough for now. "Your forgot to mention--" I didn't forget, you do it.

I hope this helps, anon!

[selicyoats]

my thoughts on the persona 3 cast

SPOILERS BELOW (OBVIOUSLY) Junpei Iori Battle Rating: 3/10 Junpei was never doing anything too impressive in all honesty. He had Agi and he had decent Phys skills, but he began losing relevance once Akihiko joined and Character Rating: 10/10 There's one of his lines that really spoke to me, and it went something like: "The only reason every day has felt the same was because I wasn't putting in the effort to make every day different." It's really stuck with me, and in addition, him helping Chidori find reason to want to look towards the future and living was also beautifully done. Yukari Takeba Battle Rating: 9/10 She's pretty useful early-game and late-game, with a slightly weaker mid-game due to Ken and Mitsuru being slightly more useful. Character Rating: 8/10 Seeing her come to terms with her father's death and her resolve to end the Dark Hour was very beautifully done, and seeing her interactions with Mitsuru really helped her character a lot. Akihiko Sanada Battle Rating: 10/10 Debuffing and having ridiculous normal attacks made Akihiko a staple team member for me, and boy does he pack a punch. It's a shame he doesn't get any physical skills, but his normal attack is pretty good as is. Character Rating: 10/10 Just look at the scene where he talks to Shinjiro's coffin and you just know, man. I couldn't do his character justice in a description, but I can at least lament at how they murdered his character so he could be turned into "lol protein!!!!!" man.

Mitsuru Kirijo Battle Rating: 8/10 "haha marin karin" have you heard about FULL OFFENSE (or playing portable like i did) She's pretty good. Heals plus damn good ice damage is very very nice. Character Rating: 8/10 Similarly to Yukari, her character benefits a lot from having to come to terms with her father's death. I unfortunately can't give much say, as I didn't get to spend much time with her. Once I do replay P3, I'll go through her S. Link. Fuuka Yamagishi Battle Rating: uhhh/10 She's your support, so, uh. Yeah? Kinda hard to rate her in that aspect. Character Rating: 7/10 She had cute interactions with Natsuki. While her character don't go extraordinarily far, she doesn't really need to have a deep character. Aigis Battle Rating: 10/10 She is so fucking busted and she also provides buffs and can also HEAL??? And she comes with Orgia Mode to boot? The devs 100% wanted you to use Aigis. Character Rating: 10/10 Man. Seeing her come to terms with how she'll never be human the more human she gets really hits hard, but seeing her resolve to "live" as herself and not as who she was made to be was such a great scene it made me tear up. Koromaru Battle Rating: 8/10 dog. The Mudo and Agi support kind of just make him a better Junpei I guess? I used him a bunch while Aigis was out and he did a great job. Character Rating: 6/10 I mean, dog? It's hard to give him character, but it's nice seeing him come to terms with his former master's death. Ken Amada Battle Rating: 7/10 He comes with healing support like Yukari, and the Hama skills are nice too. Shame he overlaps Zio with Akihiko, but he's not bad if you're not running Akihiko. Character Rating: 8/10 Like with most Persona 3 characters, seeing him deal with his mother's death is a big showcase of his character. It's nice seeing undertones of his character in the S. Link, and how he wants to be older and how he likes superhero movies but deep down he wants to be taken seriously, and he wants to be seen as more than just a kid. That being said, if you romance him with FeMC, what the fuck is wrong with you. That's a kid. Shinjiro Aragaki Battle Rating: i dunno I never used Shinjiro, but from the looks of it, he seems to be heavily phys-focused which is good for bosses but not so much for Tartatus exploration. Character Rating: 8/10 He's got cute stuff going on with Koromaru, but he's mostly a wheel to move other characters than he is a vehicle himself, if you understand what I'm saying. That being said, he acts as a fantastic wheel for both Akihiko and Ken, being pivotal for their character growths. In general, the S.E.E.S. has some fantastic characters under their belt, and I couldn't be any happier Persona 3 was my first Persona game. I'll probably give my thoughts on the Investigation Team another time.

[2winkspice]

My Destruction Only Account - 4

[ Previous ] [ Next ]

So. We've hit the Phantylia Wall. After multiple days of trial and error, I can't seem to find a way past it. It's disappointing, but it's important to look on the bright side: with the August shop reset, Hook can be bought from the shop.

I insinuated that Hook was absolutely instrumental to the account, and at first glance, maybe it's hard to see how that could be the case. Phantylia isn't weak to Fire, so how could she be any better than PhysMC?

Well, Hook was instrumental, not for fighting against Phantylia directly, but for something much more important:

Simulated Universe.

With Hook, we now had all the elements needed to smash through the Svarog wall on World 4 with ease. And even in SU, Kafka's world 5 fight is a breeze thanks to the Abundance path unlocking in the same world.

Access to ornaments were very important, because now the builds could be completed. Not only that, but SU has a wonderful, wonderful quirk: while the drop rates for Gold relics are tied to your EQ, Gold ornaments for SU5 and SU6 are *not* EQ locked.

Thanks to Hook, we now had access to the best DPS Ornaments in the game--Inert Salsotto--at 5* rarity, no less! Coupled with the double Ornament Drop Event, it felt like Serendipity, true poetry. Not only that, but being able to clear SU thanks to Hook got us access to the Herta Shop Destruction LC, Fall of an Aeon.

Now, the stage was set.

Almost.

Y'see, if shiny yellow artifacts were all that was needed, it wouldn't be much of a challenge, would it? No, there's more to this.

Although we had the Gold relics, this didn't solve the major problem, which was Jing Yuan. These Gold ornaments helped my characters, but not him.

So, for Jing Yuan, we needed to call upon the great reagents of old: consumables.

There is a very cheap and easy to make consumable that gives you +25% DEF. I also considered getting bonus HP, but because Phantylia cuts your Max HP as part of the fight, I decided DEF would be better.

The question was what offensive consumable to use.

I initially went with Lightning Paste to boost Jing Yuan's and Arlan's attacks, but they kept falling short. After investigating, I found this:

This is a massive 12% CR boosting consumable, locked behind Serval's companion quest, which is itself locked behind a random side quest. I blazed through it without hesitation. This Crit boosting item would elevate not only Jing Yuan and Arlan, but also MC and Blade.

At this point I had been at this for over a week straight. Nothing compared to the almost-month of Cocolia, but in that case I was simply farming, using my Power and waiting. No progress could be made, so I just relaxed and let time pass me by, logging on for my Jade and nothing else.

This, though, this was active, almost daily, running face first into a brick wall level stuff. No joke, I had a friend tell me it would be better to give up than keep trying. It came from a place of love, I think (hope).

Now, to activate inert Salsotto's effect, you need 50% CR or higher. Blade was prioritized for this, as he was easily the best Damage dealer.

At the end of the farming, this is the best I could do: 4pc his set, 3* CR body, 2pc Salsotto. With the two stacks from his set he sat at around 52% CR. Just enough.

Unfortunately, PhysMC didn't have a full Salsotto set, but he did have a full phys set, which would have to do. For some reason those orbs and ropsles weren't dropping on the right set, and Arlan...

Well...

Still, this would be good enough, for now. I felt good about these builds, and this set up. It would be close, and I was relying on at least one lucky Arlan Crit, which was only about a 27% chance between his relics and the Disposable Arm.

For the upteenth, unknowable time, we went into the domain. Even with all this preparation, it still required luck. Remember, Jing Yuan can never be targetted, or hit. I had to leave and come back to the fight time and time again to get a run where Jing Yuan avoided every attack other than her AOEs. I shuffled positions a bunch too, even though all of them technically had the same aggro and it shouldn't actually matter.

After days and hours, it happened.

Finally.

*Finally.*

To explain this, Phantylia will always live on 1% HP and advance her turn forward to do an AOE attack. She also has a normal attacking turn where she does an AOE attack, and she does another AOE attack immediately when she shifts phases. This means that, normally, she does 3 unavoidable AOE attacks. This will 100% kill Jing Yuan, and it is impossible for him to live through all 3.

But.

If you're able to nuke her down before she takes her normal attacking turn, she will advance forward, and her story based AOE will happen instead. Essentially, if you can kill her fast enough, in the first turn rotation, then she will only do 2--not 3--AOE attacks.

Jing Yuan cannot live through 3 AOEs.

But barely, just barely, if he isn't attacked, and *by the skin of his teeth*....

He can live through 2.

And it happened. Somehow, by some miracle, we were able to nuke her down in Rotation-0. Jing Yuan, who had not been attacked, lived through her AOEs. And finally we were greeted with this screen.

It was a long and arduous journey.

But I'm was so excited to have gotten past it all.

I was convinced that the fight would require Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, but as it turns out, the only thing that was required was luck, a lot of consumables, and of course, Pitch Dark Hook the Great.

I'm a bit scared to see what the end of the Xianzhou Luofu arc will hold. With all the trouble getting past this hurdle caused, I'm scared the next one will be too high for me to vault.

But I'll be damned if it wasn't fun to try.

And that's the story so far of my Destruction Only Account. I'll keep working on it, of course, but there's no more content to do right now, so I'll have to wait.

[ Previous ]

[fiymywings]

hahaha dw! i also did that with him too when i first got him (hollow liker solidarity) and if its not too much to ask, would you be able to recommend team comps for clearing the normal and hard revenge bosses? im having a hard time clearing them 😭😭

i havent been doing this revenge boss this time around (at least not right now since it was the first half and i was preoccupied on yumeishi management) so the most i can offer is a few baselines:

figure out what type the boss is, because its gonna be really difficult running a phys team on a phys boss that ends up buffing itself into oblivion. THAT SAID if you believe in your debuffers/buffing ability, you can still try

if its AoE, run two healers + guard/dps/utility. in AoE cases, usually the enemies in the back that will buff themselves while targetting at random will be the biggest threat. make sure you have a unit that can grant def for the bosses type (if its a magic boss, a unit that provides magic defense or a barrier if you have initial cyrus/initial victor good to g)

if its a single target, one or two guards with evade (initial kent and asahi) is the most important part, because if the boss breaks through your line of defense itll likely oneshot your units at that point def buffed or otherwise

buffing > debuffing usually, which unfortunately makes chars like hollow a little less viable BUT theyre not completely unusable and chars that grant stun/confusion can still buy time for a dps to snipe an enemy in the back.

these arent Solid of course, some AoE bosses wont have enemies in the back that are of worry (though some will have healers in the back, in which case those Do still count as itll give the boss time to whittle away at your units)

for this event i believe both bosses are physical types which is great because in comparison to magic def theres a LOT of really good physical guard options, however if you dont have any magic offense 4*s i really do suggest trying to bruteforce it with a physical team since in my own experience initial shion and gui have been......struggling :,) and est just barely manages to hit my "respectable damage" quota even with shiranuis buffing

kent and asahi are really good defense units since they have evasion (moon on both of them), and in the case of needing to pick off enemies in the back DATEN mikage brings them to the front in his moon, railway hollow damages + debuffs the enemy 3rd from the front in his initial + sun, i believe the recent camus attacks enemy 3rd from the front in his moon, and going off that baseline if you can recognize the "mae kara 3" skim reading chars skills you can find more chars similar

im not sure how AoE dps manages? i personally prefer big single target damage over medium AoE damage since slow and steady Doesnt win the race in revenge bosses (slow and steady = the boss starts revving up its skill more and wipes your team) but it might work! who knows

i do have a friend whos in a ymkr discord so i asked if anyone in theres found a nice team comp but since im not in it myself since i dont like being Perceived:tm: i cant really offer advice as of rn, but at the very least this mightve been a bit helpful? unfortunately at some point revenge bosses become impossible for f2p/people who save exclusively for one char, so if youve made a comp that just barely gets close to doing so even when youre actively playing (i.e. no auto and trying to strategize skill timing) it may just be an issue of "my current units just Cant do this one" which kinda sucks if i can be honest since a lot of the meta so far have been solely limited gachas i.e. sweetfes kuchen and its Very disheartening trying to find strats and seeing them insist you have to have him

[hematomes]

genshin impact: the neverending suffering of artifacts’ farming

hi, don’t forget to drink water, do you daily commissions in genshin and get your daily bonus on the mihoyo lab website thingy

so today, since all... idk, 12 of you seemingly asked for it, i’ll be rambling about genshin’s artifacts and how to boost your character’s performance with them. get ready for broken english and me going on and on about stats (but not too much bc i hate maths). let’s goooo

quick disclaimer before we begin: this is just the opinion of one (1) single player. i just enjoy the strategy a lot and the fact that this forsaken game forces me to think long and hard about stats. at the end of the day, if you’re satisfied with your DMG, you don’t have to listen to me.

finally, if you want personalised help in building a specific characters, i’ve been studying most of them (especially 4* since I have all of them zkzezek) so you can DM me anytime! or even go with the asks if you want to remain anon, i don’t mind. i’m happy to help anyone!!

table of contents

I. data about the different artifacts (stats when maxed out, info)

II. ideal stats for each type of character

1. main DPS

2. sub/burst DPS

3. healers and tanks

III. CRIT rate/DMG and the 1:2 ratio

I. data about the different artifacts

so, first, a little bit of info/data about the artifacts!

you’ll get an added substat at lvl 4, then substats will improve every 4 levels. one random substat improves, so you’ll have to pray and cross your fingers

the substats cannot be the same as the main stat

5* artifacts go up to lvl 20, 4* to lvl 16 and 3* to lvl 12

the percentage bonus is added on your character’s base stats

the flower and the plume’s main stats are always HP flat and ATK flat. focus on their substats to pick the best

added bonus: every set of artifact has extra lore in the archive. for example, eula’s set (pale flame) has incredible lore about the fatui harbingers and has dangerously increased my need to see scaramouche again

and now, the maxed out stats of artifacts. i’ll go over 5*, 4* and 3* for new players!! baby genshin players are literally the best idc.

flower: 3* goes up to 1,893, 4* to 3,571 and 5* to 4,780

plume: 3* goes up to 123, 4* to 232 and 5* to 311

HP%, ATK%, DEF%, elem DMG bonus%: 3* goes up to 23.1%, 4* to 34.8% and 5* to 46.6%

phys DMG bonus%: 3* goes up to 28.8%, 4* to 43.5% and 5* to 58.3%

EM: 3* goes up to 92, 4* to 139 and 5* to 187

ER%: 3* goes up to 25.8%, 4* to 38.7% and 5* to 51.8%

CRIT rate%: 3* goes up to 15.4%, 4* to 23.2% and 5* to 31.1%

CRIT DMG%: 3* goes up to 30.8%, 4* to 46.4% and 5* to 62.2%

healing bonus%: 3* goes up to 17.2%, 4* to 26.8% and 5* to 35.9%

a. sands of eon/timepiece

so the sands of eon aka the timepiece is quite decisive for the type of character you’ll be doing: either a main DPS or a support (tank/healer/sub DPS). as such, it has similar drop rates & maxed out levels on the big 3 stats: HP, ATK and DEF. however, when building a support like a sub DPS or a healer that relies on their ult (like diona for example), you’ll need energy recharge (ER), which is a lot rarer. elemental mastery (EM) isn’t generally recommanded as a main stat, it’s best to find it in sub stats. DEF% is also not a good option unless it’s for specific characters that rely on their defense, like albedo or noelle.

basically, a main DPS will most likely have a ATK% timepiece, while a support would need an ER%. that being said, supports like xiangling must also have a good chunk of elemental mastery because her ult can deal insane amount of damage with elemental reactions. you’ll need to balance both ; for example, a weapon with elemental mastery (like dragonbane) and a ER% timepiece, or good EM/ER substats etc.

b. goblet of eonothem

the goblet is where you’ll typically get your elemental/physical DMG bonus. it’s the only artifact that gives this bonus at all (it’s not found as substats). you can also drop EM, ATK%, HP% and DEF%.

there’re little characters that would need phys DMG. if you’re building a physical DPS, consider their base ATK and the stats of their normal/charged attacks. albedo, for example, would not be your typical phys DPS. the main phys DPS that exists is razor, and now there’s also eula; razor is an especially good physical DPS bc he gets a phys bonus either way so at lvl 80 + a lvl 20 goblet you go up to 105% phys DMG bonus. however, electro DPS is also a nice option! claymores tend to be very good physical DPS because their normal attacks easily go over 100% of their ATK, but i heard that fischl and xiangling are viable as well. all in all, anyone can be a physical DPS, but some of them are better off as elemental DPS. you do you, though!

c. circlet of logos/hat

the hat is crucial, because it’s where you’ll get your main CRIT rate/DMG. CRIT is super important, especially with your DPS; i’ll talk more about the best way to build CRIT in a bit, but just know that the main theory is building the 1:2 ratio: 50% CRIT rate and 100% CRIT DMG.

you might also know that there’s the healing bonus, needed for... healers. like crit rate/dmg, you’ll only find the healing bonus on the hats.

II. ideal stats for each type of character

now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about the ideal stats for each type (main DPS, sub/burst DPS, healers, tanks).

1. main DPS

there’re a lot of good main DPS characters in genshin. mine are xiao, yanfei, razor and hu tao, for example. there’s also childe, ganyu, ningguang... and usually you’ll build them the same way (with exceptions). as such, your goal would be at least 1.5k ATK% (unless your DMG depends on something else, like hu tao and how it relies on her HP%), 50% CRIT rate and at least 100% CRIT DMG.

your substats priorities would be: CRIT rate/DMG > ATK% > EM (unless it’s a physical DPS) > ER%. there’s always exceptions, like hu tao once again (i talk a lot about her but im pissed bc i can’t drop a good HP% timepiece).

as such, your timepiece will generally be on ATK%, with CRIT rate/DMG subs. elemental mastery is an added bonus on characters like hu tao, yanfei, etc. DEF% and HP% are generally secondary (except for hu tao because, as i said, her DMG relies on her max HP & her burst on her health bar status), so focus on the big 3. flat stats (no percentage) aren’t very good either, but better than nothing.

your goblet will be either on ATK% or on elemental/phys DMG bonus%. the easiest way when you’re building a set is to leave the goblet as your broken set (aka the 5th piece with no set bonus), since the drop rates on elem/phys goblets are very low.

your hat will be on CRIT rate/DMG, depending on which one you need. ATK% is a viable alternative, but crit is really good. however, if you’re just starting to build, you can use a temporary ATK% hat.

2. sub/burst DPS

support DPS are very interesting characters to build and play. unlike DPS who focus on DMG/ATK/etc, this time you’ll have to balance energy recharge% and elemental mastery. the substats are also very important and should be focusing on ATK%, EM and ER%.

when building a support, you need to keep in mind that they’ll be buffing your main DPS’ damages, so they rely a lot on elemental reactions. which is why your substats priority becomes ER% > EM > ATK%. CRIT is always good but not as important, especially if you have around 200 EM and your main DPS is already past 50% rate/100% DMG.

your timepiece should be on ER%. with a sub DPS that relies on their burst, the ideal ER% is around 150%, especially if they need a lot of energy to build their burst. xingqiu, for example, is better around 170%, but chongyun would be fine at 150%. since the timepiece is the only artifact with the ER% bonus, it’s kinda crucial.

your goblet needs to be either on elemental DMG bonus% (not physical!) or ATK%. EM can be an alternative, especially if it helps you reach +50% on elemental reaction DMG. otherwise, elemental DMG bonus% is the safest option.

your hat should be on EM or ATK%. EM is better because it’s super rare and really helpful for elemental reactions so, if you drop one with good substats go for it.

3. healers and tanks

they are absolutely vital in dungeons like the abyss thingy, because you can’t use food so you’ll need to heal with characters. currently we have qiqi, jean, zhongli if you have his c6 (god), diona, bennett, barbara (free) and noelle (free). there is two type of healers: those who only heal on their ult, like jean, bennett and diona (moreover, bennett only heals 75% but he gives an ATK% bonus so he’s still incredible), and those who heal with their elemental skill like barbara, c6 zhongli, qiqi and noelle. the first type will need a focus on their ER% while the second on HP% (except qiqi, it’s on her ATK%). zhongli in particular needs as much HP% as you can because at c0 he’s a tank & his shield is the best of the game. it relies on his HP%, so aim for around 30k at lvl 80. if you can go higher, even better! and if you want a run-down of my stuff for zhongli i can too, mine is at 49k HP and his shield is at lvl 10, so he can basically shield me from anything. anyway.

healers that rely on their ult

your timepiece will need to be on ER%. aim for at least around 150% energy recharge, maybe more depending on how much energy their ult needs. ideal substats would be HP%, the rest isn’t that important.

your goblet has to be on HP%. if you can get an ER% sub it’s even better.

your hat, in healing bonus%. same thing, if you can get an HP% and/or ER%, even better.

healers that don’t rely on their ult

this time, the focus would be on HP%, but ER% is always important so look for it in substats. same hat.

exceptions: qiqi, noelle

qiqi’s heal is based on ATK. her e is based on her ATK but the ult is based on the character that deals the DMG. meaning if qiqi has ult and the opponent is marked with a talisman, and if your character deals like a 1k DMG, they’ll get 1k HP. so switch your timepiece and goblet to ATK%, and keep your hat on healing bonus%.

noelle, however, relies on her DEF. same thing than qiqi, switch timepiece and goblet to DEF%. noelle as a healer/tank doesn’t have a very useful ult, but if you got lucky and have ATK% ou CRIT rate/DMG% substats, see if you can up her ER%!

III. CRIT rate/DMG and the 1:2 ratio

if you’ve done some research on the ideal crit rate/dmg, you might have heard of something called the 1:2 ratio. it basically means that you need to have half as much CRIT rate% as you have CRIT DMG%. the starter would be 50% rate & 100% DMG but, in my opinion it’s not really enough if you’re around AR 45 or aiming to clear the last stages of the abyss spirals. 50% CRIT rate is enough but if you can up your CRIT DMG% to like 125/150% it’d probably be the best. i got super lucky with my xiao and went up to 200% CRIT DMG, but it’s because he already has a CRIT rate bonus as you level him up so it wasn’t my priority.

anyway, i’ve been playing with around 50% CRIT rate on my DPS (except xiao bc he also has the CRIT rate polearm + his lvl bonus) and frankly it’s been enough for now. dealt a 98k with the hutao & mona ults combo, hu tao around 50% rate & 150% DMG while mona was at 30%/150%. naturally, the higher your CRIT rate, the better, but the 1:2 ratio is just a good start. don’t obsess over it!

conclusion

well, this was fun. now, it’s your turn: if you have questions or you disagree with something i said (very plausible, i might have said a lot of dumb stuff and i could be a terrible player lol), do tell! keep it polite though, i don’t want to start a fight but i’m always interested in other players’ experience. i’ll say it again: drink water. mwah

[artzychic27]

Artist Family Values?

Everything is calm. Marinette, Alix, and Rose are playing funeral in the backyard; Felix is helping Juleka write a love note to Rose, confessing her feelings; Nathaniel is arm wrestling That and losing

Marc: Nathaniel, wonderful news. My mother is going to have a baby and she wants us to have it... Right now.

*Several hours of excruciatingly painful labor later*

Little girl: And then mommy kissed daddy, and the angel told the stork. The stork flew down from heaven and left a diamond under a leaf in the cabbage patch, and the diamond turned into a baby.

Marinette: They had sex.

*Later*

Rose: Nathaniel!

Juleka: What news?

Marinette: Nathaniel, what is it?

Nathaniel: It’s an Artist!

The baby’s name is Kiran. He has black eyes and was born with fangs

Marinette and Alix immediately hate the baby and do everything they can to get rid of him. Guillotine, shooting him, dropping him from the roof

Marc: Mari. Alix. Why do you hate the baby?

Alix: We don’t hate him. We just wanna play with him.

Marinette: Especially his head.

To keep Kira out of trouble, Marc and Nathaniel hire a nanny. Lila.

Juleka immediately hates her because of how she’s taken a liking to Rose. Little does she know that she isn’t in love with the blonde. She’s a black widow out for their fortune.

Noticing that Marinette and Alix are onto her, Lila makes it seem like they wanna go to summer camp so they’re not in her way.

Nathaniel: *Disgusted* Fresh air. The scent of pine.

Chloé: Hi. I'm Chloé Bourgeois. Why are you dressed like that?

Marinette: Like what?

Chloé: Like you're going to a funeral. Why are you dressed like somebody died?

Marinette: Wait.

While at camp, Marinette and Alix make enemies of the popular bratty rich kids and allies out of the outcasts (The Akuma class)

Marinette finds herself glaring at a certain boy from America who glares right back at her... It’s Damian.

Back at the Artists’ home, Rose finds herself falling in love with Lila, much to Juleka’s anger but no one seems to notice

Marc and Nathaniel invite them to a gothic bistro

Lila: I just can't tell. Does she like me at all?

Marc: Of course she does. She pulled out her hair at the sight of you.

Marc and Nathaniel perform the badass tango from the movie

Meanwhile at the cemetery, Lila and Rose get engaged surprisingly quickly

Rose: Good news! I’m engaged!

Juleka: What?! *Felix pats her back for comfort*

Lila: *Shows the ring*

Marc: That ring.

Nathaniel: It was my grandmother’s. She was burried with it.

Lila: *Holds up a shovel*

Later that night at the camp, Alix and Marinette attempt to escape with some help from Damian, but are caught by the brat campers and are forced to sing Kumbaya

Damian and Marinette find themselves becoming closer

Damian: You know... I’m pretty good with a knife myself.

Marinette: ... *Holds Damian’s hand*

Escape attempt #2 is a success. When they hear about the wedding, Marinette and Alix have to go and see if it’ll be a train wreck. Of course, Marinette invites Damian as her plus one.

It’s surprisingly pleasant. Everyone’s dressed in black, the flower girl is tossing dead petals on the ground.

“I do.” “Ditto.” Marinette catches the bouquet.

Damian: Now you have to get married.

Marinette: It’s not binding.

On their honemoon, Lila attempts to kill Rose by dropping a toaster in her bath. Unfortunately for her, Rose is immune to death by electrocution

Needing a new plan and for the Artists to stay out of her way, Lila forbids Rose from seeing or speaking to em ever again.

Meanwhile at camp, Alix shoots an endangered bird!

Camp director 1: It’s a white tailed eagle!

Camp director 2: Aren’t they endangered?

Marinette: They are now

Juleka is sulking after receiving a letter from Rose, saying she can’t see them ever again.

Juleka: Have I done something, said something? Why does she despise me?

Nathaniel: Rose adores you.

Juleka: I'd do anything for her. At her request, I would rip out my eyes. At her command, I would crawl on my stomach through hot coals and broken glass.

Marc: ... You’re in love with Rose?

Back at camp, the directors announce that the campers will be performing the poorly written and quite racist play about the first Thanksgiving

Chloé will be playing Sarah Miller, the outcasts will play the Native Americans, and Marinette will be playing Pocahontas.

Marinette passes out at the announcement

Meanwhile, the Artists visit Rose and Lila at their pristine white mansion.

Juleka: So these are the gates of hell.

Lila forced them to leave, and Rose, out of fear, backs her up.

Marc: I see Lila that you have placed Rose under some strange sexual spell. I respect that. But please, may we see her?

Lila: No!

Marc: You have gone too far. You have married Rose. You have destroyed her spirit. You have taken her from us. All that I could forgive. But, Lila...

Lila: What?!

Marc: ... Pastels?

They leave, but not before Juleka curses Lila.

They try to go to the police, but they won’t take them seriously, and Nathaniel makes the following announcement

Nathaniel: I shall not submit! I shall conquer! I shall rise! My name is Nathaniel Artist, and I have seen evil! *Juleka holds up Kiran* I have seen horror! *Felix waves* I have seen the unholy maggots which feast in the dark recesses of the human soul.

Marc: They’re at camp.

Speaking of camp. The main 3 attempt to escape again, but are caught by the other campers and are soon forced into the Harmony Hut where they’re forced to watch Disney Movies.

Hours without food or drinks later, and they come out looking pale and traumatized

Marinette snaps out of it and traumatizes them back by smiling

With the Artists, something horrible has happened to Kiran. He blonde and has blue eyes!

Marc: My brother!

Nathaniel: *Faints*

Juleka: *Reading from spell book* “Infant possessions. These terrifying changes are most often the result of a troubled family life.”

Marc: Rose!

Juleka: If we don’t get Rose back, we’re talking dimples.

Nathaniel: Not in this house!

Juleka: He could stay this way for years. Forever. He could become... A lawyer.

Nathaniel: No!

Juleka: An orthodontist.

Marc: Juleka, please!

Juleka: ... Mayor.

Nathaniel: NOOO! TAKE ME INSTEAD!

It’s the day of the highly offensive show that portrays Native Americans as uncivilized people.

It goes off well until Marinette flips the script.

Marinette: You have taken the land which is rightfully ours. Years from now, my people will be forced to live in mobile homes on reservations. Your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs. We will sell our bracelets by the road sides. You will play golf and enjoy hot hors d’oeurves. My people will have pain and degradation. Your people will drive stick shifts. The gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said, “Do not trust the pilgrims, especially Sarah Miller. And for all these reasons, I have decided to scalp you, and burn your village. To. The. Ground.

The outcasts burn the camp to the ground and attack the brats while the main 3 escape in a canoe.

Meanwhile, Lila tries one last attempt at killing Rose, knowing this won’t fault. A bomb.

When it goes off while she’s out, she’s expecting a blonde corpse. Not Rose holding a tray of cupcakes and a warm smile

Enough is enough.

Lila: *Aims gun* I tried to make it look like an accident! I tried to give you some dignity, but, oh, no, not you!

That shows up to save the day by hitting Lila with his car and helping Rose escape back to the Artists’ Home,

*Now for the best scene*

Marinette: I may never see you again.

Damian: I know.

Marinette: There are forces tearing us apart-- Gary, Lila, tenth grade.

Damian: I'll never forget you.

Marinette: *Touched* You won't?

Damian: You're too weird.

Marinette: We'll always have today and camp

Damian: And this. *He holds up a retainer*

Marinette: What is it?

Damian: Chloé’s retainer. *Drops it to the ground* Meyn ziskeyt.

Marinette: Mi querido.

*The two kiss through the fence before pulling away and wiping their mouths*

Meanwhile, Nathaniel’s lost his mind.

Nathaniel: *Lying in bed* Swing low... Sweet chariot... Coming for to carry me home.

Marc: Oh, my sister is ill and my husband is dying. Juleka, what am I gonna do?

Juleka: Well, you already have a black dress.

Rose returns, apologizes for abandoning them, reconciles with her friends

And at that moment, Marinette and Alix return from camp. They all group hug, and Juleka is about to tell Rose about her feelings for her, until...

Lila: In-laws!

Down in the dungeon, the Artists, Felix, and That are strapped into electric chairs while Lila tells them the story of her life... Through slideshow!

She burned her house down with her parents still in it because they gave her Malibu Barbie instead of Ballerina Barbie

Marc: *Disgusted* Malibu Barbie. The nightmare.

Nathaniel: The nerve.

Her first husband the heart surgeon could never make it on dates, so she committed axe murder.

Juleka: Aw, an axe. That takes me back.

Husband #2 was a Senator who wouldn’t buy Lila that new, expensive car because they had to set an example. She ran him over.

Lila: So I destroyed one innocent life after another. Aren't I a human being? Don't I yearn and... ache and shop? Don't I deserve love... and jewelry?

Marc: *nods* Adios, mi querido.

Nathaniel: Zay gezunt, meyn tayer.

With some encouragement from Felix, Juleka uses her last few moments to confess to Rose

Juleka: Rose, night after night, I have desired you. I would worship every pale, lifeless limb on your body, die and kill for you, love you even after my dying breath. Rose... I love you.

Her confession leaves Rose in tears.

Rose: I love you, too.

Lila: Oh, barf! *Grabs the lever* Goodbye, everyone! Wish me luck!

Artists: Good luck.

Right as she’s about to pull the lever, Kiran, back go normal and by some miracle drops down from the ceiling and switches the wires, making Lila electrocute herself to death

*One year later*

Juleka and Rose got married! Also, it’s Kiran’s birthday! And Damian’s invited!

Rose: And to think I might have missed all this. What was I thinking?

Marinette: Physical pleasure.

While the others are celebrating, Marinette and Damian hang out in the cemetery and talk about marriage. Which Marinette doesn’t want

Damian: But what if you found a man so devoted to you, who worshipped you, that he’d be your eternal love slave?

Marinette: I’d pity him

Damian: *Looks at Lila’s gravestone. ‘Friend, Family, Killer* Damn. Lila was sick.

Marinette: She wasn't sick. She was sloppy.

Damian: What?

Marinette: If I wanted to kill my husband, I'd do it, and I wouldn't get caught.

Damian: How?

Marinette: I'd scare him to death.

Damian: *Scoffs* Sure. *As he goes to lay a flower on Lila’s grave, her hand pops out of the ground and grabs him, making him scream.*

[archonanqi]

In Genshin, who are your favourite characters: 1) Lore and story wise, 2) Gameplay wise (how fun and useful they are) 3) Visual design wise and 4) Personality wise?

(Yo so I swear that I hit post on this but I just found this in my drafts... it’s been 3 months... I’m so sorry)

...I uninronically have to say Zhongli for all of these, but I’ll also add in another character for each because y’all already see me ramble about Zhongli every day 🥺

| Lore and Story

Zhongli - Do I need to say more... I absolutely love the narrative trope of “ancient powerful immortal learns how to be gentle with humans” and that’s Zhongli to a T. Even before I knew about Guizhong I was Hooked on him and now he lives rent free in my brain at all times.

Childe - His lore is deeply interesting to me, what’s with the whole falling into the Abyss as a tiny Babey. I feel like he’s going to be the gateway into a lot of important story elements, such as more information on the Abyss, the lady who lives there and saved him, the overarching villainy of the Tsaritsa, etc. Also we just love 1 (one) feral little boy who tried to fight everyone, got sent to the military as punishment, and then fought so good that he got Promoted to fight MORE.

| Gameplay

Zhongli - Uhhhh I have him at C6 so that might might skew my opinion a bit but hands down he’s my most used unit, and that’s with me having all units except Klee. I just don’t die with his constellation heal and burst shield, pillar is always nice during exploration, the mans is a Mining Machine, and the petrification for controlling adds is just 👌👌 I’ve also always been fond of the “summoner” playstyle in most games AND I love filling the bruiser / tank role so Zhongli being both of them was absolutely perfect. That said, the Zhongli buffs are absolutely welcome for those without his constellations, only the best stats and kit for the CEO of GEO.

Albedo - Geo supremacy gang rise up.. I love Albedo for being a super solid off-field, selfless support — I don’t have any decent artifacts on him  but he still consistently adds on so much off field damage to my Phys DPS Zhongli with his super low cooldown E. It also charges up my Zhongli burst like no tomorrow, 10/10 best battery. The yellow blossoms are also just so so pretty and the tactile / visual / audio feedback on them is 👌

| Visual Design

Zhongli - The man could step on me and I would thank him. He can kick me like his spear. I bleached my hair ombré so I could begin to touch a hint of his divinity. I literally stand there in-game and just zoom in on him sometimes. Ever since I got the Kamera my hard drive has been screaming for the sweet release of death from the thousands of Zhongli pictures I’ve snapped. I'm learning Liyue music on a piano I haven’t touched in four years, so I can imagine playing his city’s music for him. My right hand is muscle memoried to repeatedly run his attack sequence and stop at the spear kick animation so I can imagine myself being the spear. Yeah I think he’s kinda cute! 👀 👉🏻👈

Xinyan - Trying to stray away from 5* characters here. Love her outfit, love her hair, love her facial design in general. Her ult animation was the highlight of the 1.1 trailer for me (besides Mr. Zhongli of course) She got swept under the rug because of the Zhongli debacle and it’s super sad because she’s a very solidly designed unit with beautiful animations. I also love that her instrument is a traditional lyre that she canonically designed to look like a rock guitar.

| Personality

Zhongli - We’ll be here all day if I really really start poppin’ about Zhongli’s personality so I’ll try and keep it short. Zhongli’s personality is an ENIGMA to me that I have and will continue to spend countless hours studying. I’ve been thinking of releasing my findings in a character analysis, tbh, because like. There’s so much. On the surface he’s a well-meaning, kind, gentle if not a little out-of-touch individual with a flair for the traditional / fancy. 

But??? He won the Archon war? We know from Roald’s Adventurer Diaries, where he slips into Osial’s memories, that Zhongli was absolutely BRUTAL during the war. What changed him? (Guizhong) How long did he take to change? What has he learned during the last 6,000 years of life -- certainly how to manipulate mortals like puppets, as we see from his Archon quest, which no one seems to address?? Is there some part of Archon-War-Victor Morax still in there, waiting for the right spark to ignite his fuse? Yo??? I’m.... just have a lot of feelings about Zhongli’s character. 

Beidou - Pirate.. lady... hnnghh,,, step me,, ; ; Beidou is a character we haven’t seen quite yet but just her voicelines and story intrigue me so much. She killed Haishan without a Vision, stopped singing completely after said kill, is doing some kind of dirty work for the most powerful people in Liyue whilst boldly proclaiming that she is their equal,,, has a huge family and a heart of gold, seems to be against the social hierarchy of Liyue yet tolerates working with the Qixing? There’s so much going on and I for one am eagerly awaiting 2.0 not for Inazuma, but for seeing her in the story 

Thank you for the ask!!! It felt great to just let loose and examine my relationship w/ each of the characters in the game. :) 

[fateology]

witness my brain rot. tma raven cycle au but i haven’t looked at trc in many years so probably even more of a mess than it fundamentally is as a concept

martin blackwood as BLUE SARGENT

this is a pretty obvious choice since i casted jon as gansey already. fox way women include jane prentiss/annabelle cane/agnes montague, who all raised him as a spooky polycule. helen is there also opening doors in his bedroom when he needs boy advice (she is not to be trusted)

he is also the number one aglionbyphobe in town. comes very close to spitting on jon during their first meeting, which is a great coincidence, because jon, too, was dying to spit on him

they work it out though but only after many books of disdainful co-adventuring

his dad may or may not have been a tree

jonathan sims as RICHARD GANSEY

what is he looking for? glendower? jonah magnus’ corpse? probably jonah magnus’ corpse. when he was eight he nearly died after being attacked by i dunno a very large owl but he heard A Voice and survived. now he will not stop until he finds that buried old shithead

picks up friends like they’re fun rings. he’s not even that sociable so no one’s really sure how it happens

sits awake in monmouth every night with gerry/melanie and builds little cardboard panopticons that he sees in his dreams. why is he looking for the corpse of jonah magnus? unclear. he sure knows a lot about the man though

owner of a terrible horrible car that martin has definitely succeeded in spitting on at one point. the car is an extension of his soul so it was the next best thing

georgie barker as ADAM PARRISH

certain about this because georgie could so be an adam. aglionby is co-ed here so she can hate from within the club. the number two aglionbyphobe, she would be number one if not for the fact that she actually is in aglionby, which bumps her down one spot

begins a very intense rivalry/mutual interest with this other awful girl jon’s acquired as a friend aka wtgfs as pynch!

later on she gets psychic lessons from fox way ladies. scries in the aglionby girls toilet by plugging the sinks when she should be in latin class

(georgie, eyes black: WHAT DID MELANIE KING GET ON HER GATSBY ESSAY. AND WAS IT HIGHER THAN ME

cracks in the porcelain, rearranging: 89

georgie: FUCK)

melanie king as RONAN LYNCH

she is one half of two ronans because i split ronan into two parts. she’s ronan prime. the number three aglionbyphobe. rouser of tempers, flouter of school rules, breaker of nose bridges

she and jon are friends because she broke his nose in phys ed after he ran into her on accident

super into the other awful girl jon’s acquired as a friend, will not admit it even to herself. proceeds to have four books worth of angry dreams about it

drives her dead father’s swanky car around all the time because what is the raven cycle about if not driving your dead father’s swanky car around all the time. brotherless, except for gerry, who is basically her declan. they’re both greywarens and the worst kind of bffs

gerard keay as RONAN LYNCH, DOS, or DECLAN LYNCH, LITE

gerry is also a lynch sibling except that he’s both declan and ronan somehow

mary is niall and eric is aurora. instead of grieving for mary’s death gerry goes frolicking in the hills out of sheer joy (ABOUT TIME! and with a TIRE IRON no less! this is everything he’s dreamed of)

but also eric is dream-asleep except when he’s in the forest...what was it called...cabeswater. so not a full win. cabeswater was a keay/king team effort

anyway gerry greywaren indulgence 💖 he would do great with a raven on his shoulder. he was the one who brought jon to the nurse after melanie broke his nose, providing jon with the absolute coup of two awful new friends in one day. fast forward some months and gerry’s bunkbedding with melanie in monmouth

lots of gay rivalries (4 to be specific) and gay car races, which brings me to the next thing,

mike crew as JOSEPH KAVINSKY

except less of a douchebag and more of an asshole. primarily because the witch at the middle of the figurative bog of my prolonged tma brain rot is gerrymike. actually this would be tma dream thieves au if i’m being honest

lichtenberg figure = mike’s dream monster. mike does the counterfeiting thing mostly with rare books because he’s looking for something to exorcise the lichtenberg from his dreamscape.

that feeling when your family is rich as balls and you are functionally or genuinely an orphan and also you can manifest objects in your real life from your sleeping brain. nothing to be done about it except have some homosexual car races with your rival who happens to be sexy and a goth. once more, driving your dead father’s swanky car around all the time.

his dream pack includes jude perry/michael shelley/mikaele salesa except it’s not His dream pack because he doesn’t have the kavinsky ringleaderitis and they’re just weirdos who hang out together and occasionally do dream narcotics

sasha james as NOAH CZERNY

classic. the secretly been a ghost all this time! got #murdered years ago so she’s glad that her friends don’t seem to mind. everyone just thought she was like anemic or something.

depending on where you began the story it was about sasha james...was more when she was alive etc etc.

definitely was a skater. got beat to death with her skateboard by her best friend who was also quizzically named sasha

timothy stoker as HENRY CHENG

i don’t think i have to say much but yeah. he’s gerry’s fourth gay rivalry. wildly aglionby-popular which is honestly not something he should be proud of (he knows this)

constantly getting dunked on by all of jon’s friends but he can dunk back just as good which is a relief for him

embroiled in a mystic dynasty of his own thru his mom but way more well adjusted about it than gerry or melanie (they dunk on him to cope)

hobbies include toga parties and joining other peoples relationships (aka jonmartim as sarchengsey)

no real plot to all of it because i can’t figure out who’s who in terms of antagonists. all of them are jonah magnus wearing different people’s skins probably

[garnettfox]

Izanagi Challenge run part 1

Well here we are at the start, I’m starting a clean save and thinking over how I think this is going go.

My best guess is the start is going to be realitivally easy, not exsactly sure how far I’m gonna manage to get, my hopes is to at least beat Chie’s Shadow if not get about half way through the dungeon. She shouldn’t be too hard, but hopefully when I start getting Shuffletimes I get either a Dia card or if I’m lucky a Bufu to help with Yukiko’s Shadow in the future. Thinking about it I don’t see the early game being too hard especally Kanji’s Shadow but who knows what RNGesus has for me.

Middle game largely depends on the skillcards I can get but I can see it being a challege. and oh dear god I am not looking forward to the Amino-Sagiri fight that fight has been the bane of my existance in every other run and I expect no different now. Oddly enough I think I’ll be able to handle the last two bosses pretty ok long as I’m not stupid

I love the fact when you pick Very Hard difficulty the game warns you that you can’t change the difficulty, then immediately says ‘Relax and enjoy the game!’ No, No I’m here to suffer.

For the name I went with Yu Narukami for canon’s sake, I don’t normally use the canon name But might as well for this run.

I’m also not going to go over the story unless it’s somehow related to a dungeon, I find something intresting to comment on, or some way to make a joke. So your pretty much just gonna hear how the dungeon crawling’s doing and how much a boss is pissing me off. And I’ve also recently finished my NG+ Run of the game so Ya I’m gonna be fastforwarding and skipping a lot.

....I’m not the only one who wished in NG+ It was at least an option to ask Yosuke if he was ok when you see him crash right? As it is your a complete jerk to him by ignoring him when he’s in pain and distress twice before helping him out of the trashcan. AND BEST BOI DOESN’T DESERVE THAT SHIT!

Tutorial fight and huh, those shadows definately got a damage boost, ended up using a medicine before the boss...This can only mean good things.

At least Yosuke’s Shadow is an easy boss, weak to Zio meaning Izanagi can just zap him into submission, though he does use Winds of Oblivion which, is a wind skill which we’re weak to.

...I’mma just rant here for a second YOSUKE DESERVED HIS OWN DUNGEON!

Like I get why they did it on several levels, give you a party member before the first dungeon, teach you how boss fights are gonna work. I even get why they thematically did it with his Shadow appearing in Saki’s space.

The thing is though, it doesn’t work properly which sucks because they did it perfectly with Chie who also doesn’t get her own dungeon. Chie’s Shadow takes up residence in Yukiko’s Castle and it fits her issues *perfectly*.

Chie’s problem is her fagile ego, she thinks of Yukiko as being better then her so needs to keep Yukiko co-dependant on her to prop herself up. Which makes it thematically appropriate for Chie’s Shadow to be in Yukiko’s dungon. She views herself soo poorly and as being soo weak she can’t even form a dungeon and can only leech off of Yukiko’s, her ‘betters’ dungeon.

Yosuke....Ok...He...Tries to date Saki to deal with his boredom but...She isn’t the *core* of his boredom or resentment, that’s the town at large, if he saw Saki as a symbol for the town he’d hate her not want to date her. She was a means to an end and while Yosuke’s charicter arch does involve him working through his complicated feelings for her *their not why he formed a dunegon*

Just...I know we just got the Steam port but if Atlus ever does a remake of P4 In the updated P5 Engine, Yosuke deserves to have his own dungeon.

And my estimation of myself took a nose dive when not only did the Shadows of the tutorial fight deal way more damage then I thought, but Yosuke’s Shadow actually killed me...So much for him being an easy boss....

Second attempt I actually remember the tutorial Shadows are weak to Zio (I thought they where weak to phys hence why they got off enough attacks on me I ended up needing one of those medicines I needed for Yosuke’s fight) and Yosuke’s Shadow goes down since it has a pretty damn easy pattern along with it’s Zio weakness, just guard when it uses power charger and when it guards and you’ll be ok.

Anyway first team mate get and thanks to his boyfriend Privileges he will never leave the party.

...

For real though Yosuke is the only team mate who has wind skills other then Naoto who only has the single target spell (And you only get in October), has the best speed of all your team mates and is the most vercitle learning skills from pretty much every branch avaible to him, want him to be a healer he can heal, want him to be a magic power house he’s got you, wanna do physical he can do physical. His adaptiblity is really second only to the Protags with the Wildcard (Which we don’t have in this run) and I happily keep him at my side through the entire game.

Yosuke Social link go, Chie causing drama, basically filling time till you see Yukiko on the Midnight Channel then hijinks, getting supplys and heading to the castle.

I only got armour for myself and Yosuke and spent the rest on medicines since I...You know...Wanna live through the dungeon.

And I was right to do so as the first Shadow, a pises took out HALF MY HEALTH IN ONE HIT.

Also god damn it P4 Why do I have to manually switch Yosuke and the others to my control it’s soo goddamn annoying to have to do that the first time I use anyone.

First floor cleared and first skill card earned! It’s Tarukaja which...Not what I wanted and I just personally favor the automatic boost skills you can get. And the ones that offer a plus for using it like Yosuke’s Youthful Wind not only being a Sukaja but healing you for some of your health. Course he’s not going to get that skill till january. *Sigh*

About to face Chie’s Shadow and I deside to restore some of Yosk’s SP since he has Garu which she’s weak to and hope for the best, I really hope I’m not gonna have to grind the first floor for this...

First turn and she kills Yosuke. This is only going to go sooooo well.

It went ok...Till I got her into her low health animation and she killed me with a lucky Mabufu. Alright let’s try this again before I go back and....Attempt to grind.

And I got booted all the way back to the town....*Sigh* Least this means I get a reroll on that skill card...IF I get another one.

Which I don’t. *Sighs* and like a fucking IDIOT I forgot to restore Yosuke’s SP before the fight. At least since I resist Zio I could do a little the first turn and settle in for her attack loop.

This time I don’t even make it to her low health animation before she get’s a lucky crit and kills me with Bottomless envy. *Grumbles* Ok I’m starting to get frustrated so, Chie’s Shadow can be smug over her victory while I cool my head for today.

[megareviews]

Octopath Traveler Combat Review

Hello whoever’s reading this, I’m here to talk about Octopath Traveler’s combat system, and how it sucks. Now you might be wondering, why am I writing about this now, isn’t that game kind of old at this point? Yes, it is, but I only “finished” playing recently since I was working off of a borrowed copy and it’s more the level of disappointment I felt while playing it has stuck with me much more than many other games I’ve played. Since I want to go into game design and development, I thought that it would be good practice to do a deep dive on game mechanics, and it’s easier to write about something that I have strong feelings about to start with. While I have many issues with Octopath, the combat system is what the player is dealing with the most (which in itself is an issue), so the fact that it was lackluster dropped the enjoyability of the game more than if it were better balanced with story and exploration. I’ll try to hit everything that I had a gripe with, from minor things I personally would want changed, to what I view as major flaws that lower the enjoyment for everyone. I will be talking about the post-game boss, because a lot of my issues come into focus during it, so spoiler warning.

For reference, I’ll be talking about the game the way I played it, so I’ll give my main character loadouts in relation to the final boss. Team 1: Hunter Therion, Cleric Alfyn, Sorceror Cyrus, and Thief Olberic; Team 2: Warlord H’annit, Scholar Ophelia, Apothecary Primrose, and Runelord Tressa.

Now the big overarching problem with this game is its simplicity. Making a game simple can be a good thing, and definitely makes it more accessible, but there are a plethora of sub issues that I will be going into throughout this caused by how oversimplified many systems are in this game. For starters there is the lack of skill diversity, as in, there just isn’t very much that characters and enemies do over the course of the game. The offensive skills have 12 possible damage types, 6 weapons (Phys) and 6 elemental (Elem) and there’s only really 4 different ways these are implemented: single hit, multi hit, wide (hits all enemies) hit, and wide multi hit. Multi hits are generally just better due to the break system and damage limits, and wide hits are better the more enemies there are. Those of you good with numbers might have already multiplied those to get 48 ways of hitting an enemy, and I’ll add two, since the Merchant has an single hit untyped skill and the Starseer has a wide untyped skill, for a grand total of 50 that I can remember. Looking at that number I actually don’t know if that looks like a lot for somebody who hasn’t played the game, but the damage types only really matter in the break mechanic of the game and which stat is used for calculating damage. No particular type of damage is better for damage or accuracy skill wise, and the elem skills will do the exact same thing no matter which element is used since they’re only based on the user’s Mag stat. Phys attacks are a bit different since each one is affected by the weapon the user has equipped for that type, but they’re generally all +Str and then +Mag / +Acc / +Crit / +Spd / +Eva. Some Phys skills also have side effects that help differentiate between them, but the basic attacks are the same when the weapons are similar.

Since I brought it up, let’s talk about the two main mechanics of combat that this game has, the break and boost systems. Overall, these systems are pretty good on their own, and most of my issues are rather small here. First up is the break system: hit the opponent with their weaknesses a number of times, and they lose any remaining moves they have this turn, any they would take on the next turn, and all attacks against them deal more damage, though on the turn after the next, they are guaranteed to move first. This is where most of the fun of the game is, figuring out the enemy’s weaknesses, as they are hidden when you first encounter an enemy, only revealed when the weakness is hit, or with the Analyze skill, and then timing the breaks to be the most beneficial to your team. Many enemies belonged to groups with similar weaknesses, so it’s interesting to learn like winged creatures are generally weak to wind and / or spear attacks. The main problem I have with the break system is that once an enemy is broken, all damage types have the same effectiveness. Before being broken, an enemy that is weak to fire will take extra damage than if it’s hit with an ice attack, but while broken these attacks will do the same damage. Any accuracy bonuses don’t matter, since you can’t miss an attack on a broken enemy and speed bonuses only really matter if the order in which skills are cast is important, which there are some cases, usually with buffing allies. Then a bit smaller is how the weakness bar is always ordered, so some damage types are more useful to figure out all of the weaknesses. For example, if a weakness to staves is the leftmost weakness to be found, the player knows that there are no other physical weaknesses and to just start trying elemental ones. There were also some interesting extra mechanics that were only used a few times, such as shuffling weaknesses after a break, or, one mechanic used exactly once in phase 1 of the final boss, rotating through weaknesses when being attacked.

Then we get to the boost system, which complements the break system very well, with only minor annoyances. It makes the player decide between spending power against an unbroken opponent to break them faster, save up to deal massive damage to an opponent once they break, or how frequently turns need to be spent to cast buffs or debuffs. One issue that I have here is that magic users get the short end of the stick again, as basic attacks are the only moves (besides Bewildering Dance, the RNG move) that boosting will cause more instances of the move to occur. Boosting three times on somebody that will basic attack an enemy can cause them to lose 4 shields, while doing the same on a fire skill will just cause it to do more damage, which is objectively better to do when the enemy is broken. This usually isn’t an issue, as the BP can be spent on status effects and healing which will always be helpful, so besides Cyrus (laugh at him, he’s a nerd) there’s always something to spend BP on, thought your personal playstyle might dictate otherwise. Something that’s more personally annoying is how the limit is 5 BP max per character, since the most you can use is 3 per turn. What would be really nice and satisfying would be to break an opponent, have everybody spend 3 BP for full boosted whatever on the break turn, and then have everybody spend another 3 BP on fully boosted whatever else on the second break turn.

Next is another facet of the simple problem, is that there is significantly less character variability than the game wants you to think, and that’s not much in the first place. There are only 96 total skills for player characters, as there are 12 jobs with 8 skills each, and each character has their default job and may also equip a secondary job, letting each character go into battle with 16 skills, ignoring the path actions that grant others conditionally. The 8 base jobs can be simplified into 2 categories, DPS and Utility, 3 if you want to split the utilities into physical and elemental which I see as reasonable, or if you want to stretch it and split the 2 DPSs in the same way. I’ll stick with 3 since I can show how to best simplify them this way, watch. DPS: multiple damage type skills; Phys Utility: one weapon type set of skills, one single target elem skill, and a couple (de)buffs; Elem Utility: a single target elem skill, a wide elem skill, and a bunch of buffs. The advanced classes are even simpler, three of them being every attack type in either weapons or elements and then the remaining one being a bunch of buffs with one multi element skill so that every element had 5 related skills. I’m debating going into each individual job, but there are two that I will be getting into later for sure, Thief and Starseer, for opposite reasons.

Related to the lack of damage types and skills, is a lack of feeling of progression throughout the game. You gain access to 66% of the skills you will ever have by the end of the first quarter of the game, and the last 33% you won’t get until about the last quarter of the game. While the beginning of the a game it makes sense to give the players a bunch of tools rapidly, especially given the whole theme of versatility of the 8 different starting characters the game is based around, skills just scale up with the player’s stats, given through levels and equipment, otherwise they stay the same. While the middle half of the game can be used to mix and match secondary jobs on characters, it’s all just variations on the familiar. While this lack of progression just makes the game a bit boring until you start finding the advanced jobs, the actual issue is how SP scales through the game. The game ends up getting significantly easier as you progress further into the game since the SP costs become a smaller percentage of each character’s SP pools, and most forms of SP regeneration are percentage based, so characters get back SP easier too. For example, I had Ophelia with Second Wind (which I will get to in detail later) and a bunch of SP equipment, which by mid-game meant she could cast most spells and heal back more SP than they cost, and late-game everything was free outside of revive, which took two turns to fully heal. This is contrast to the beginning of the game, where a single skill cast could deplete a character’s entire SP pool, especially the physical jobs, as they usually came with smaller SP pools in the first place.

But where the runaway scaling is the worst, is actually on the thief job. Thief is a physical utility class, so it comes with dagger skills, the mandatory single hit fire skill, phys str and def debuffs, and some slightly more interesting abilities that falloff as the game goes on and you don’t need items or SP as much. All three dagger skills have special qualities, the divine skill uses the characters spd in the damage calculation, but HP Thief and Steal SP are the really broken ones. They both function the same way, hit twice with the dagger, then recover some percentage of the damage dealt to the stat in the name, 50% to HP or 5% to SP. The cost is also the same for each, 6 SP. There seemed to be a bit of a decrease in accuracy for each compared to just basic attacking with a dagger, so early on it was a bit of a risk to use it on enemies, especially if they were unbroken and not weak to daggers, as you would be losing SP to gain 30 health, or getting two dagger hits without boosting. But then, once the total damage of both hits reached 120, or even if you wanted to be safer, the damage of either hit, you start having a move that is free to use and hits more times than a basic attack without using BP, while also being able to heal yourself in a pinch. Now, the max damage you can deal in one hit without the Surpassing Power is 9,999, and you can very clearly see that a thief becomes an invincible slaughterer, as one can either heal themself for 9,999 HP, which is the max, or 999 SP, which is also the max, per turn. Now this might take a bit of set up, such as decreasing the enemy’s physical defense, which I remember mentioning is an ability that the thief job has, or increasing the thief’s physical strength, and there are a few ways to do that, but what I’m saying is it’s pretty much just all lined up for you to do way too easily with next to no drawbacks.

I’ve mentioned two support skills by now, so I should probably talk about them and the issues that they have. There’s 4 for every job, so 48 total, and each character has 4 slots that they can have support skills assigned to with no job related restrictions. This theoretically is about 200000 combinations, but since many support skills don’t synergize well with either the other ones or with the character or just are worse than others, there’s actually a lot less. The first way the options are culled are through support skills that are basically required. First on that list of required ones is that everybody needs Saving Grace, full stop. It changes the equipped character’s max HP from what is listed to 9,999, though if their HP is above their listed max, they can’t be healed any further until they have returned to a normal HP level. This gets very important for many late game bosses, and I feel like every paragraph is opening another two or more topics to go to, as most character’s 2k~3k isn’t enough. After that is some form of SP assistance, as the support skills are the ones with all the fancy %SP recovery. There’s 4 options to choose from: % max heal, heal % basic attack damage done, halve all SP costs, and heal % damage taken. Your magic casters will generally get the % max heal, since they have large mana pools to take advantage of that, and your DPSs will have the basic damage one, with much smaller mana pools and higher physical attack damage. Anyone with the Thief class can skip this, since as I’ve said, they will never run out of mana anyways. The % damage taken isn’t particularly useful as it’s such a small percentage and much less reliable than the others given it’s based on the enemy’s actions and targeting rather than yours. The Halve SP costs skill is situational, as some classes have higher SP costs, but losing the ability to actually regenerate SP makes the longer (and usually harder) fights more dangerous as you still run the risk of running out of mana. I used it on Tressa, since I played her as a caster and her mana pool is a bit lower than the other main casters, plus her Rest ability allows her to regain SP on her own. Third is either of the stat buff skills, once again the choice is based on how the character will be dealing damage. There’s Physical Prowess for Phys attack and defense or Elemental Edge for Elem attack and defense, and instead of being a stat boost like other similar skills from base jobs is that they permanently grant the combat buff to those stats, which means you don’t need to spend time casting the skills that do that AND that they can’t be dispelled by the enemy. What you do with the last slot (or two for thieves) is more open and is going to be where you can have ideas about different builds.

For me though, that last slot went to Surpassing Power on most characters, because by late game, most of my characters were hitting the damage limit pretty easily. Now the damage limit is just the fact that no single attack can deal more than 9,999 damage, because the developers said so. The support skill Surpassing Power, similar to Saving Grace, ignores that, and instead makes the max 99,999, though have fun trying to reach that before your character’s stats max out. Octopath unfortunately has a lot of these kind of arbitrary limits which only seem to exist to highlight an ability that can get around it, like purple treasure chests and Therion’s job ability. By the time I got to the post game boss 5 of my characters were consistently hitting the damage limit, and due to the sometimes absurd amounts of health that opponents had, Surpassing Power just made most of those fights so much faster.

Now a bit of time talking about enemies, because the difficulty scaling of the game is pretty boring, once again due to how simple the game is. This is really an issue among a lot of this type of RPG, since the game is just a numbers game and bigger numbers = harder fights. There’s two points specifically that make Octopath particularly bad with this, the lack of weaknesses on player characters, and enemy health. Since the player characters don’t have any weaknesses like enemies do, you really don’t have to pay attention to what specifically the opponent is doing, at most you can pay attention to whether you are taking physical or elemental damage, but the types are completely irrelevant. There’s a slight exception since there are accessories that reduce specific types of elemental damage, but as far as I could tell it was just better to use accessories that gave stat bonuses. Some enemies had abilities that could inflict status ailments, or had secondary abilities similar to player skills, but they were so few and far between that once again it doesn’t really contribute much. The other issue is with enemy’s health, in that they generally have way too much and causes the game to become so much slower. Fighting basic enemies is almost never a danger to your team assuming you are properly equipped, but the fights can still drag on for 5~10 minutes just whittling down their health. This even applies to fighting enemies that are much lower level than your own team, mostly due to the defensive bonuses that an enemy that hasn’t been broken has. This culminates to a final boss with about 700,000 HP, ignoring all the summons that it has and that it can’t take damage while the summons exist. Again remember that the maximum damage per hit is 9,999 in most cases and 99,999 in the other (which I’ve never gotten close to even with max offensive stats). Then also add in that you probably won’t be anywhere near that first max damage unless the boss is broken too, and you can see why the fights just take so long.

Ok, time to talk about the other job that particularly stood out to me, the Starseer. It’s a healing support job mostly focused around manipulating the party’s BP. Or at least the good skills it has are focused around BP. The divine skill is a wide untyped elemental attack dealing damage based around the whole team’s BP stock, and one of its utility skills also increases damage when the user uses BP, which you have to for divine skills. Another skill it has increases the BP gain of an ally to two per turn, rather than one. Unfortunately we’re already starting to get into the ok skill territory, as due to the way BP is gained, it is only useful for about half of the duration. After a character uses BP, they don’t gain any for the next turn, and since the max is 5 BP, there can only ever be two turns in a row where you benefit from this, and depending on support skills, the maximum benefit a character can get from this ability is an additional 4 – 6 BP. Now there is a Merchant skill that can give another character 4 BP instantly for the exact same cost. The rest of the skills range from decent but situational to worse versions of other job skills, and remember, Starseer is a secret job, meaning you don’t start with access to it, all the abilities are relatively expensive, and you have to fight a boss to unlock it. Continuing to a decent but situational skill is one that can target either enemies or allies, and prevents all stat buffs from being able to be applied to an enemy or prevents all stat debuffs from being able to be applied to an ally. If you know the enemy is a type to be able to apply either, this can be helpful if you can time it properly. The other skills of the job are mostly more expensive and / or worse versions of skills that other jobs have. From dealing multiple types of damage (worse than just 1 in 95% of cases) to healing over time (enemy’s damage considerably outpaces the healing it provides) to a counter that doesn’t prevent the damage like its counterpart, pretty much every active skill they have is disappointing.

I ran out of steam on that last paragraph, and stopped writing this for about 3 months, so I’ll just get one last point in. There are actually a lot of mechanics in the game that are kind of complicated, but since this game is about oversimplification, much of the most important nuance that the game actually has is hidden from the player. There are a ton of little bits of information that would make decision making in the game so much easier, but because the game refuses to display them, there’s a lot of guesswork. In some cases, this hidden information is obfuscating mechanics that subvert player expectations, so what they thought was an easy decision should actually be harder. The following is a non-comprehensive list of some of the worst offenders of hiding information in my opinion. The stat nuts, which raise character stats permanently, give different amounts of their stat depending on which character eats it. Moves that hit a random amount of times ignore all bonuses and penalties to accuracy and evasion. Items that reduce damage or recover HP/SP don’t say by how much, or whether it is percentage or a flat number. Healing skills scale with the caster’s elemental defense. What makes these and similar mechanics the most annoying is that there are some skills that do list exact numbers or percentages for their effects, so it is inconsistent too.

I will end this now and hopefully I covered everything I meant to. A lot of this was thought up while mowing the lawn or laying in bed trying to get to sleep so if something was lost in the recesses of my mind that’s unfortunate. I hope whoever made it all the way down here enjoyed reading, or at least thought it was interesting, and feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to hear more.

[outsidercocktail]

Repost don’t Reblog!

You get sent to the Arknights Universe Isekai style! So how well do you think things would go for you in this Post-Apocalyptic  Quirky Fun World?

01. Basics

What Race are you? Ghost Spirit Existential echo created by a cluster of emotions and memories contained within an Originium spike Undisclosed

Where do start from? Ursus

Do you have Oripathy? does it really count as Oripathy if you ARE the Originium? Yes

What Abilities, Skills, Powers, etc do you have?

weapon: none type of arts: intangibility, passive luck manipulation debuffing aura S1L1: auto. boosts attack and defense of nearby operators within range by 10-15%. S2L1: manual. 15-30% chance increased phys dodge. extends range by 1, lowers def and atk of all enemies within that range by 15-30%. trait: 50% chance to dodge physical attacks and is less likely to be targeted by enemies. class: reunion boss specialist tags: melee, debuff phys strength: normal mobility: normal phys resistance: normal tactical acumen: excellent combat skill: normal arts assimilation: yes decent

How do you survive?

dodge shenanigans, but it’s less effective against arts-using enemies. would need to be paired with melee units, snipers, or healers to stay alive if caster enemies are expected or on the field.

Do you seek out a Faction, or try to join Reunion or Rhodes Island?

first come, first serve. it’s either be reunion or rhodes, whichever of the two finds the originium cluster that spawned me first.

02. Interpersonal

Who you do (HOPEFULLY) run into first?

honestly, anyone who doesn’t shoot first and ask questions later... reunion would be worst-case scenario in those terms, save for like... maybe Frostnova or Patriot. rhodes is a lot better as long as it’s not say... someone completely terrifying like lappland.

Who do you think you’d be best friends with?

friends? virtually anyone. best friends? ehh... good question. hmm... i’m more like Exu, who while very friendly tends to keep people at arm’s length. so that’s a very situational answer.

Who would you most likely get into conflict with?

not many, i can typically roll with just about any personality that comes my way. may get unsettled by characters with very high strung or unpleasant personalities. People who cause a lot of stress.

Who would be a (HOPEFUL) love -interest for you?

i am very gay but also ace as heck, and also extremely paranoid and cautious about things like love and romance, so i’d have no preferences or expectations in that regard.

Who would you be rivals with?

friendly rival or hostile rivalry? friendly rivalry, shamare probably. possibly gitano. hostile, literally anyone who goes out of their way to be an unpleasant personality.

What is your dream (un)wanted harem?

i’d feel pretty weird about it, honestly, so dream (un)wanted harem is no harem at all. just give me someone who is comfortable with me, and would love me for me.

03. Direction

What do you do?

just exist. new place, new sights, new experiences. i’d just want to learn. and hoard useless trivia. once i find out about the various conspiracies i’d probably latch onto those and never let go.

If you found a way to return to your world, would you want to?

possibly, no idea. would depend on how my experiences form in that setting, and what could let me go back, how it would happen, and when in time i would reappear. There’s no point in going back if there’s nothing left to go back to, after all.

Tagged By: @ripharm​ Tagging: steal!

[crossxskulled]

I see. How often does he use 3rd eye? Does it grow stronger with training? Has he ever tried to use God Hand as a one-inch punch? If he coats his weapon in elements like fire or nuclear could he bypass physical resistances?

Throughout Strikers the 3rd eye is used often. From being able to accurately depict an enemy shadow through senses, to catching constructs made invisible through cognition in order to travel upon, those are the fixed uses that it holds. In terms of training it’s an ability that doesn’t really need training in the traditional sense. The more you’re acutely aware of your surroundings, the more you come to realize what’s ‘out of place’ in order to be interacted with.

So it’s more of a high profile utility tool. Perfect for thievery. You’re even able to track footprints and any established traps within an environment you’re in.

Also that comes as a positive! In fact what you listed there are abilities that Panther and Queen both have in strikers. They can augment their weapons with those said abilities and even enemies that null phys attacks find themselves pressed into the ‘Resisted’ damage status. Though, I theorize that if the Elemental Break skills existed up in Strikers, they can just bypass those reflective/drain/null skills Phys/gun barriers entirely. It’d just take their good moment of set up.

And yes. The primary way he’d love to use God Hand is as a augmented physical punch. Being able to utilize that while not having the Persona presence is a hell of a life saver. There’s a lot more wiggle room in terms of dimension to give a good punch/push at the foe or surrounding environment.

[theramseyloft]

For those wanting to breed or foster pets:

The price and screening process for a pet is meant to be a safety net to prevent your baby from going to some one who will not take good care of it.

But once that baby is out of your hands, there is no guarantee that the quality of its care will continue.

Here is a recent example, my response to it, and my thoughts in parentheses.

For context,  This is not just some one asking for advice out of the blue. They purchased the cock from me to breed to their hen. 

This first conversation follows a detailed genetic discussion of what makes the pair (A blond Cock who carries white and a Dark/wild pied hen) sex linked.

Long explanation very, very short, this pair can only throw Dark/wild cocks and blond or white hens.

It is physically impossible for Darks to be female out of that pair.

And it is physically impossible for Blonds and whites to be male.

(The next topic I plan on starting is one on Ringneck genetics, so that explanation is coming, sweet hearts.)

Client:  So interesting! So the blonde pied who I swear is a boy is actually female? She has never laid an egg and is very dominant just like ziggy treats daisy. Lol you just answered my question before I typed it. Daisy is the mom. That's why I'm so fascinated by all of this.

Dove mom:  Yep. It is literally impossible for any blond or white offspring of Ziggy and Daisy's to be male. Blond cocks can only throw blond male offspring when paired to a white or another blond.

Client: Could they be any other color besides blonde- the pied babies I mean. Is it weird she hasn't laid an egg is 1 year old and mates the other  birds. I read doves can be gay and they don't really know sex...but she acts 100% male. You should write a book!!

Dove-mom:  Ringnecks do not flock.  When sexually mature ringnecks are in a bigger group than an opposite sex pair, they fight. It can be mistaken for cuddling, because Ringnecks have two specific modes for fighting.  Cocks typically box and bite and overtly dominate.  Hens fight a war of attrition by trying to elbow eachother out of the space they want. It looks like cuddling, but mated pairs of ringnecks do not choose to cuddle together in a nest. At most, they stand shoulder to shoulder on a perch. They do NOT lean on eachother when they do this.  Leaning on the other bird is an attempt to shove it.  When doves are kept in a group long term, though, the stress causes them to effect behaviors of the opposite sex as a defense mechanism.  More aggressive hens will attack other birds overtly by boxing, biting, and chasing like a cock.  Gentler cocks will be cowed into expressing hen behavior to avoid attack.  The larger the group, the younger new babies are cowed into silent docility.

No, hens out of that pair can only be blond or white.  Pied is an autosomal recessive gene that alters pattern. A blond pied is still blond, and thus female.

Client:  That makes sense. I'm still curious as to why th ziggy is being so kind to the babies. They all even clean each other. My first 3 Clean each other too. All this time they seem like best buddies. But it sounds like I'm wrong.

Dove Mom:  Ringneck doves are NOT social. They HATE other doves they are not mated to, including their own weaned children.  Ringnecks are Viciously territorial because ALL encounters with ANY dove other than their mate are direct threats to their nest, mate, and young. 

Life revolves around the nest for ringnecks. No matter how many you give a group, only one can be The Best. Even if all nests are identical in every aspect, there is only one Best location.  Only the biggest, fittest, most aggressive cock can defend it, and thus his wife and peeps from all comers.  Likewise, only the biggest, toughest hen can outlast all the other hens to keep the nest. 

If another cock fights of the resident, he doesn't just get the nest. 

He also gets the toughest hen! She will NOT accept her former husband if he loses. 

 In the fight betwen hens, who ever leaves first for what ever reason loses her claim, not just to her nest, but to the biggest, strongest, meanest cock.  If the resident hen leaves to eat, drink or poop, she forfeits her claim and her former husband will help his tougher new wife chase her off. 

 Stakes are HIGH in ringneck encounters! So the mere presence of other doves able to make physical contact with a pair is about like having them live in a flight with a hawk or snake.

Ziggy is being unusually patient, but that;s because you have taken the previous babies out in a timely fashion up to this point and he expects them to be gone soon.

Client:  Wow. At the first sign of aggressive behavior from him I removed the babies. But since I haven't seen this yet I held off. Maybe it's best if I remove them this weekend.

Dove Mom:  While his wife is not stressed by them, he's tolerant. For now, there is enough food. She isn't feeding new babies yet, and the current babies are too young to be rivals. The second any of that changes, he will turn on them.

You may need to put the cock-ish hen by herself with calcium suppliments. Stress and malnutrition are the only things that prevent egg laying in ringnecks, regardless of the presence of a cock to fertilize them.

Client:  You know what's also strange. The cockish hen sits on the eggs like a male while the hen eats etc...

I'm getting ready to pick up my son I will respond back in a little bit . there's a lot of weird things going on maybe it's just because I've never witnessed so many birds interact with each other before.

Dove Mom:  Nah. Same sex hen pairs always do that. 

 Both sexes have an equal hand in rearing eggs, so there is literally no difference between the way cocks and hens set. 

 The lady wife gets off, and the cockish girl get on because it's her turn, just like it would be if her mate were male.

---------------------------------------------------------------

A few weeks pass, and the Client contacts me again.

Client: Hello my friend! I hope this finds you well. I'm sorry I didn't respond sooner. I really hate to bother you with another question but if you don't mind- one of my babies is constantly fluffed like he's freezing. He's the only one. Tonight I put a heater by the cage. But could this be a sign of something else? Everyone is healthy and I've only seen this when they are cold. Our temperature has dropped like crazy in the last week and that's exactly when this happened. He cuddles under my scarf and is so sweet. But in the cage is just a big fluffy baby. What can can I do? Could it be something more?

I tried searching for answers before I bothered you but I came up with nothing.

(Note: For those who want to get started breeding, this nervous language is a red flag. Not that they looked for answers on their own, but that they did that before they “bothered” me. Watch the pattern as the conversation continues, and you’ll see why this was an inkling of something being wrong.) 

Dove mom:  You aren't bothering me,hon, I promise. 

 But yes. Fluffing is a sign of cold and general discomfort.  Feeling cold can be caused by more than a drop in the actual temperature. 

 Birds who are sick often fluff up, and so do birds who are stressed. To know which it is for sure, move the baby into a hospital enclosure with food and water.

If, upon realizing that its alone, it perks up and its feathers smooth, then it was distressed, likely by harassment from the other doves. 

 If it remains foofed, add heat. 

 If the bird remains foofed, then it isn't just cold and something is physically wrong. 

 How does the baby feel in your hand? 

Does the muscle tone of its chest and belly match that of the other doves?

Client:  I will do this now. I started heat last night but haven't seen improvement. The other birds do not bother him at all. But he weighs much less than his brother. And seems cold when I handle him. He likes to sit under my scarf.

(Other birdS?! Plural?! Who don’t bother him... but he has mysteriously lost an apparently drastic amount of weight?)

I have been feeding him sunflowers started last night and he is eatting. If I remove him from the cage and if he turns around will I be able to put him back in once he's better?

(Put him. BACK?! With other doveS, plural?! After all the time I took to warn you that they they DON”T flock, AND he’s visibly lost weight?!)

He was actually the bigger baby and within the last week I've noticed he is now the smaller one.

(SIGNIFICALNTLY LOST WEIGHT!!! That you noticed A WEEK AGO!!!)

Dove mom:  How many other birds live in the cage he was removed from?

Client:  3 others. Mom dad and brother. But  ziggy prunes the babies just like he does with daisy and there's no fighting or meanness at all. The cage is large with 3 food and water containers. It's about 4ft wide and 3ft tall. They each have their own perch although at times they eat together and sit together. It's a very interesting thing to watch. Even my mom comments on how friendly they all are. I've been waiting to see if ziggy turns on them but he hasn't yet. I've witnessed him do that with our other birds, so I know what to look for but he hasn't done it yet.

(Three. Others. His PARENTS!!! and little sister. That you said you were going to move DAMN NEAR A MONTH AGO!!!) 

(Really. No meanness. You don’t fucking say.)

(Even your mom notices how friendly they are. Is your mom a fucking DOVE BEHAVIOR SPECIALIST!?!?!?!)

(And yet, out of fucking nowhere, this child, who was the larger baby, is now VISIBLY SMALLER AND COLD TO THE FUCKING TOUCH!!!)

(I WARNED YOU!!! IWARNEDYOUIWARNEDYOUIWARNEDYOU THIS IS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO PREVENT!!!)

(How many more days would you have waited?! Why did my fucking grand baby have to suffer emaciation for you to take the fucking warning sereously?!)

(Do you realize how close he is to DYING!?)

(I WAS TRYING TO *PREVENT* THIS!!!)

Dove mom:  I have already warned you that ringnecks do not flock and that ringneck unrest does not always look like fighting. 

I have also told you that an adult breeding pair does not care how big the enclosure is. ALL of the space they can physically reach belongs to that pair, and they do not want other birds sharing it with them. 

That squeaker did not just suddenly lose weight for no reason. 

That is the consequence of a young bird having been quietly menaced into shut down and largely barred from eating. 

 That is a thing that Ringnecks do. 

 I am begging you, please do not put him back afterwards. 

 Let his patents keep their win, because that is what this is to Ziggy and Daisy. 

That squeaker, and his sister, will die, very miserably slowly, if they are forced to keep living with their parents. 

 Now that the son is gone, attention will turn to their daughter, and she will "mysteriously" lose weight. 

 Please, please, I am begging you, do not put him back. 

Either now or after he recovers. 

 Ringnecks HATE other ringnecks and pairs MUST be kept by themselves.

Client:  Ok. I will remove the other baby today. I found a new home for one of our birds and now I just have two youngest and their 2 older sisters. I hate to ask this but can these babies be in a cage with their 2 older sisters? I don't have space for another large so I need to determine my plan of action once the baby gets well. I have a smaller hospital cage but it wouldn't very large enough to live in.

(indistinct noises of the Dove Mom suffering an aneurysm.)

(WHY ARE YOU BREEDING THEM WHEN YOU LACK SUFFICIENT ENCLOSURE SPACE?!?!?!!!!!!)

(WHAT DID i JUST FUCKING TELL YOU?!)

Dove Mom:  No, he cannot. 

 They own that space and will defend it. 

 The hospital cage is going to have to do for now.

Client:  Ok. But it's OK for me to put the 2 babies in the hospital together? I have to leave for work so just want to make sure I have all the birds where they need to be. How long do you think it will take the baby to recover from the trama?

I feel awful. And doves are tricky because I've even seen them eat together.

(This is why those scared, frustrated, furious thoughts stayed in my head and such care was taken not to just rant at this person. Look at the questions they are asking now.)

Dove Mom:  There are only two. They are not old enough to claim territory. And they are opposite sex. 

 They will be ok together. He is eating, so he isn't too far gone. Two to three weeks should see more weight back on him.

(Breeders and rescues, your primary job is to educate. Always answer questions as clearly as you are able.)

Dove aggression is subtle more often than it's overt. 

 The biblical "Dove of Peace" is not a Ringneck. It's a Rock Dove: A pigeon.

Pigeons are the only species among the hundreds of columbidae that are genuinely social and live in cooperative groups.

The misconception that Ringnecks are peaceful and social arose largely from the biblical dove of peace and a failure to understand that dove is a colloquialism for a white domestic pigeon in most of the rest of the world.

(Where both Ringnecks and pigeons are common, the Ringneck gets to be called a Dove, and things get confusing where that is what white pigeons are still called.)

Client:  You did tell this would happened But I thought I was seeing love and a family living together. I can't express how horrible I feel. Hopefully baby turns around soon and can relax peacefully. THANK YOU AGAIN!! sorry for my hard headed ways.

(Here is more of why breeders and rescues should measure your responses very carefully, especially when you are upset with the handler and worried for the safety of the bird.)

(Had I actually SAID all the things my thoughts were screaming in the parentheses, I would not have gotten enough information to be able to accurately advise this person through the peep’s recovery, because they would have been shamed and frightened out of asking anything else.)

(For your baby’s new family to be too afraid to bring their concerns to you, lest their mistake earn your wrath is NOT the outcome you want! Next time there is a problem, that out come cuts your baby off from your help and could cost it its life.)

(Seek more information, Answer questions, explain, and give context FIRST and FOREMOST.)

Dove mom:  That's what misinformation does. 

 Unfortunately, very few people that keep doves actually spend time observing their group dynamics. 

 I have spend the last six years researching them because I could not find information that matched up with the way the birds were actually behaving. 

 If you ask the people that breed them in a flock, they will tell you that weak babies just die. 

 Those babies did not hatch weak. 

 Their parents were harassed by other birds wanting their spot. Setting was interrupted.  Feedings got interrupted.  Peeps got trampled.  One or both parents lost the rights to a nest before the peeps were weaned. 

Babies do not just die or sicken out of the blue. Those stresses add up. 

But flock format is convenient, so places that use it just assume that losses of 30% or more young are normal and that less aggressive adults have mellowed rather than having been stressed into shut down. 

 When pairs are kept singly and squeakers are removed when they wean, the vast majority of peeps wean safely and the birds are never forced into stressed out shut down. 

 With Ringnecks, flock format only works in one of two circumstances, both of which require an entire room's worth of flight space. 

 Either, the entire population of the grow out flight is under 6 months old: too young to claim a mate or territory. 

 Or an adult or mixed age population is unstable: with individuals being adopted out before they can claim a space and a mate or be claimed as a mate. 

A LOT of space needs to be allocated to breeding even a single pair because the pair is quite prolific and ringnecks are antisocial. 

 There has to be a space not only for weanlings to go, but sexually mature birds you plan on keeping. -------------------------------------------------------------

It is ok to be angry. 

It is ok to be scared for the welfare of the animal. 

It is ok for your answers to be as stern as the potential danger necessitates.

But ranting always does more harm than good. 

Breeders and Rescues’ primary job is to correct misinformation, not shame people out of wrong behavior.

Neglect and abuse are cruel, but very rarely malicious.

Cases like this are more of the actual norm.

Influenced both by the cultural portrayal of doves as peaceful AND by vets and rescues insisting that doves live peacefully in groups: This person was understandably skeptical of a *breeder* insisting that those vets and rescues are wrong.

In their place, wouldn’t you be too?

Especially if the interaction between the birds LOOKS so sweet and peaceful.

My client learned the hard way that this *specific* breeder is not talking out of her ass, and will answer questions calmly and honestly. 

It is imperative that I be safe to bring questions to, even if the problem is directly caused by the client, because education is the only way to ensure that care improves.

The outlook for the peep is good. They asked *just* before it was too late.

And this hard lesson WILL stick, if they care. 

Future peeps will be more carefully planned for, because I guarantee this experience will be a haunting one for them for a very long time.

[mokuba]

finally saw the dr for the first time in a yr n a half after not having access to healthcare for an entire yr and she put me on some new anxiety medicine for maintenance so that i can finally start to function again properly and go back to just needing something for any panic attack kind of situations so i’m like. relieved and feeling better abt that... i started a new job recently at a massage studio as reception so that’s helped a lot in terms of tampering down my stress lvls and keeping everything in check (environment is rly awesome and everyone on staff is super zen so it just helps me find some semblance of my own inner peace too), so i hope this compounds positively and rly gets me back to where i need to be

also set up phys therapy so i can learn correct lifting form and some new, more effective stretches, and maybe see if i need to correct my running posture at all (but i think im good on that front by now...) so i’m looking forward to that too

it was fun seeing her reaction to how much i’ve changed physically/health-wise bc last time i’ve lost 30lbs since the last time i saw her and i’ve developed a lot of muscle tone. she was rly proud of me and i’m proud of myself too so it’s just. nice to see my results concretely in the form of numbers!! and that other ppl rly are noticing the changes since i don’t see them AS blatantly since i look at myself every day

i’m hoping that i can continue these good habits into the new yr cause i’ve been working hard at bettering myself and getting stable again...gonna fight the good fight 

[dotshiiki]

CoL, chpt 6

VI: ANNABETH

Annabeth turned the page of the book in front of her. The first sentence on the new page didn't make any sense. A few seconds later, she turned back to the previous page, realising that she hadn't really taken any of it in. If only the book was in Greek. It would have made reading so much easier. Then again, at least Latin was better than English.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been in the library already; long enough that the words were beginning to blur before her eyes.

She'd begged Reyna to get her a pass to the senate library—the greatest treasure trove of knowledge that New Rome had to offer—and since receiving it, she'd spent practically every waking hour here, waiting by the entrance at opening time and leaving only when the custodian chased her out at night. She'd cut classes and even missed an assignment deadline, but she didn't care. She could catch up on stuff she missed at school, retake the module next semester if need be.

But if she didn't find a solution to help Percy…

Everyone had a different opinion about it. Jason's advice was to give him space, that telling Percy too much would just overwhelm him. He'd told Annabeth about the confusion he'd felt when he'd awoken on the Wilderness School bus with everyone having Mist-induced false memories about him.

'Everyone was trying to push these memories on me and I knew it didn't feel right. It was especially hard with Piper expecting something from me. Even though I liked her, I just couldn't let myself get close to her.'

It was sensible advice and Annabeth was trying to follow it, trying not to push too much on Percy too soon. It wasn't easy, though, when everything she said or did was so entwined with him. She hadn't even realised how automatically she filled in his sentences, or referenced things they'd done together. Not until he winced or pulled away every time she did it.

Frank thought showing Percy places that had been important to him would make an impact, but so far none of their regular haunts in New Rome had jogged Percy's memory. Hazel felt he needed to get back into a routine and she'd gotten him back at the university, except he'd completely overhauled his course load. Piper thought they should just have faith that Percy's memories would eventually return on their own, but the thought of waiting, doing nothing, was simply untenable. Annabeth had even contacted Chiron, who had warned her that it was possible Percy would never remember the past.

'Maybe it would be better to forge a new future,' her old mentor told her gently.

But Annabeth couldn't let it be. Beyond how badly it hurt when Percy looked at her like she was a stranger, the clincher was the Iris-message conversation they'd had with his family a few days ago. The way he'd recoiled when Tyson had appeared in the rainbow, making the big guy's eye well up with tears; the brave look on Sally's face that barely masked the pain when her son didn't recognise her.

Annabeth had promised Sally she would fix it, and she was determined to do so.

After all, it had been her fault: Percy had gotten in the way of an attack on her. And it was her nepenthe recipe that had gotten him lost and captured by that damn empousa.

Annabeth fingered the bronze pendant in her pocket, a spoil of war she'd ended up with after she'd stabbed the empousa in Phoenix. She had no logical use for it, but she'd kept it for some reason. She kept carrying it with her like it might point her to an answer.

So far, it hadn't.

A shadow fell over her, blocking the light. Annabeth looked up to see Reyna standing before her, concern stamped across her face.

'Annabeth, you need a break.'

'I need to find an answer,' Annabeth insisted.

Reyna shook her head and put her hands on the book, covering the page Annabeth was trying to read. 'I bet you aren't even absorbing whatever you're reading any more.'

Annabeth wanted to protest, but Reyna was right. She'd read the paragraph on the page at least three times and she still couldn't say what it was about.

'Lay off the research for the afternoon,' Reyna said. 'Come have coffee with me.' When Annabeth didn't agree right away, Reyna raised her eyebrows. 'Don't forget who got you your library pass.'

Annabeth raised her hands in surrender and let Reyna march her out into the bright sunshine.

OoOoO

If there was one thing cafés in New Rome did well, it was coffee. But Annabeth barely tasted hers that afternoon.

'Earth to Annabeth,' Reyna said, waving a hand in front of her.

'Huh?' Annabeth sat her cup down in its saucer.

'You're still thinking about Percy, aren't you? You seriously need to get your mind off him. I know what it's like to get too focused on a problem. You'll just end up going in circles around it.'

'I can't help it,' Annabeth said. 'You don't know how awful it is. It's like, when we pass each other in the apartment, he can't even look at me. And I know he wants his memories back, but he needs it to come from himself, not from us. He doesn't even trust me any more.' Her voice cracked on the last sentence. This was it, the real reason she couldn't just let things be and start again from scratch with Percy.

He wasn't starting from a clean slate. That damn empousa had fed him a pack of lies and now the sum of his experience was being lied to and tricked. It was no wonder he was suspicious of everything anyone said to him. She would have been, in his position. But it also meant that one of his most endearing qualities, the one that annoyed her no end sometimes, but which she still loved so much about him, had been lost.

Percy was the kid who had trusted Tyson and Bob the Titan and seen the best in them. The man who was willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, a chance to prove themselves. Seeing him look at everyone now like they were his enemy unless proven otherwise—it broke her heart.

'I worry that if we don't fix this, he won't be Percy any more. He'll be…I don't know. Perseus. This bitter guy who thinks the world is out to get him.' Her breath hitched as she said it, remembering another friend whom she had lost that way.

Would Percy become like Luke—cold, bitter, and angry? She knew Percy held the same potential for darkness inside of him. She'd seen glimpses of it before. But his faith in others had always overpowered his dark side.

'He's in one of my classes, you know,' Reyna said. 'Greek mythology.'

'Seriously?'

'Yeah. It's a rubbish class—I took it thinking it'd be good to know more, what with the exchange programme and stuff, but the lecturer's crap. I was going to drop it, but now that Percy's in it, maybe I'll stick around and keep an eye on him.'

'Would you?'

'Sure. Though I don't think he trusts me any more than you. The first day he came to class, he saw me but he went straight to the other side of the room. I guess he thought I was trouble.' Reyna's mouth twisted in a wry smile. 'He still has good instincts.'

Annabeth managed a short laugh. 'Still, at least you can see how he's doing. it's hard for me to keep tabs on him while trying to give him space at the same time. I really want to know how he's coping with everything, but I'm starting to feel like a stalker every time I check up on him.'

They finished their coffee and Annabeth noticed for the first time that hers tasted off. 'There was milk in this,' she said, frowning.

Reyna laughed. 'You took my latte by accident and you didn't even realise.'

'Oh my gods, I'm sorry!'

'It's fine. Looks like you need more than just a coffee break. I was thinking of going to the sword-fighting arena for some practice. You should come. I could do with a decent sparring partner.'

Annabeth traced the rim of her coffee cup. 'I don't know. I should get back to the—'

'If you say library, I'm going to deck you. When was the last time you got some practice in?'

'Well, I didn't have any phys ed credits this term because I couldn't squeeze them in with all my electives, so Percy and I were just keeping up practice on our own. Except the last two weeks, he's been…'

Reyna nodded. 'You're definitely coming with me, then.'

OoOoO

There was a class going on that afternoon so the sword-fighting arena was crowded with students doing practice rounds with wooden swords, but there was one field free. Annabeth and Reyna claimed it and started with a warm-up round, sparring lightly with no serious attempt at attack, just getting into the rhythm of things. Annabeth's drakon-bone sword met Reyna's Imperial gold blade with a satisfying clang. Her focus narrowed to her footwork, her thrusts, and the movements of her opponent. She let her instincts take over, pushing her worries and stress out of her mind.

Reyna was right. She needed this release.

'Ready to go?' Reyna asked.

Annabeth nodded, looking forward to the match now. Sparring with Reyna was always a challenge since they were usually quite well-matched, having both been one of the best their respective camps had to offer.

Just as they took their positions, Annabeth happened to glance over at the other students. The instructor had evidently directed their attention towards Annabeth and Reyna, probably using them as a handy demonstration. Annabeth's eyes travelled over the gathered students and her gaze fell on a thin face framed with the shock of black hair that she would know anywhere.

Percy was here.

Reyna's blow almost caught her unawares. Annabeth parried at the last minute and nearly stumbled, her footwork clumsy in her distraction. She heard gasps from the watching students and gritted her teeth, angry at her own lapse in concentration. She threw herself back into the fight, but Reyna was too skilled for her to overcome such an egregious early error. She went down embarrassingly quickly.

To her credit, Reyna didn't talk down to her with a 'good one!' or any display of sympathy. 'Come on, Chase,' she said, 'that was rubbish.'

'Sorry,' Annabeth said. 'Again?'

They exchanged positions and bowed. This time, Annabeth threw herself into the match, pushing Percy out of her mind completely. She used every battle reflex she possessed, cataloguing Reyna's approach and strike style, matching every blow with her own thrusts and parries. Her footwork was quick and steady. About a minute in, she found her opening and struck at the base of Reyna's sword, using a twist that Luke had taught her a long time ago.

The Imperial gold weapon clattered out of Reyna's hand. Annabeth lunged forward and pressed the point of her sword to Reyna's chest.

'Yield!'

Reyna raised her hands in surrender. Annabeth withdrew her sword. She was breathing hard and sweating, but her head no longer felt tight and tense.

There was a smattering of applause from the watching students and their instructor. They dispersed to the other fields to practice, but Percy hung back. He had a speculative look on his face, his eyes scrunched up as they always did when he was contemplating something. She thought for a second—hoped, maybe—that he might come forward to speak to them, but then he retreated and re-joined his group.

It stung, but there was something else about it. Something in the way he looked at her jogged a distant memory—thirteen-year-old Percy scrunching up his face in concentration as he tried to learn something she was teaching him. Constellations, maybe? No, planets—she'd been teaching him a mnemonic to put them in order: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas.

'I can definitely remember that one,' Percy had said. 'I just have to remember that there's nine of them.'

'Well, think of it this way: it's a mnemonic, and Mnemosyne gave birth to the nine Muses,' she'd told him.

One of the passages she'd read in the library earlier drifted into her mind: Asclepius and Mnemosyne were often linked in prayer, invoking the process of memory in healing.

Mnemosyne, the Titaness of memory. Wasn't there a myth about her pool in Hades? Something about drinking from two springs at the same time…

'Oh my gods,' Annabeth said.

'What?' Reyna asked.

'I know where to look. The answer was at home all along.'

'What are you talking about?'

'The nepenthe—the potion we made for Percy. There must have been a missing ingredient, but I didn't realise, because it was from a different source! Reyna—thank you. You were right, this helped. But I need to go now.'

She had to find Nico di Angelo.

OoOoO

Annabeth pulled on her jacket. It was a warm night, especially for October, but she expected the Underworld might be chilly. Maybe. It had been a long time since she'd been there.

Unless you counted Tartarus, which she didn't. Anyone who'd been there could testify that it was a whole different realm from Hades's kingdom.

Hope had been fluttering like a wild bird in her chest since Nico had agreed to take her. She'd pulled out every source she could find on the Mnemosyne—some said it was a pool; others a spring, or a river—and there was even an entire religion based upon it. Although she hadn't managed to connect it definitively to the nepenthe, that recipe had been a closely guarded secret. It made sense that Helen of Troy hadn't penned all the ingredients—maybe she'd even left out the key one to mislead others.

She wondered if she should tell Percy what she was doing. She didn't want to get his hopes up, though. Maybe after they visited Mnemosyne, if they got their answers, if it really worked…well, they'd have to get him to drink it, ultimately. Would he trust them enough to try?

But she'd worry about that later, after they succeeded.

Just as she was about to leave the apartment, Percy emerged from his room.

'Annabeth?'

She blinked in surprise. It was the last thing she'd expected. Percy hadn't initiated a conversation with her since they'd brought him back from Arizona.

'Um,' she said stupidly. 'Yeah?'

'I was, er…' His face scrunched up again, making a familiar crease in his forehead. Annabeth resisted the urge to reach out and smooth it with her thumb. 'I saw you fighting today.'

'Oh.' Annabeth wasn't sure how to respond. Should she mention that she had noticed him?

'You're really good.'

'Thanks. You're actually not bad yourself.' The words came out before she could bite them back. She winced. Once again, she'd dropped more information about him—information he'd been solidly rejecting when it came from her.

Percy ignored her slip, though. 'Um, I have a favour to ask.' He reached into his pocket and brought out a pen she knew well.

Riptide. She hadn't seen it since the fight with Hipponoe.

Percy fiddled with the cap, but didn't flick it off. Probably a good thing. Terminus had long since given up on making Percy deposit it at the city boundaries—nothing really stopped it from reforming in his pocket—but he'd come down harder than Zeus's master bolt if he caught Percy uncapping it inside the Pomerian line. 'I thought maybe you could teach me how to use a sword.'

'Oh,' Annabeth said again. Her heart, already aflutter with hope at finding a cure for Percy's memory loss, went completely insane.

'Look, you don't have to if you don't want to,' Percy said quickly. 'It's just that, I wasn't really getting much from my class today, and I thought I might as well make the most of living with a real sword-fighting pro.'

'No, I mean, yes, I can teach you.' She tried not to sound too eager. 'Tomorrow?'

'Cool,' he said. 'Um. Later, then.'

Annabeth smiled. 'See you later, Percy.'

It wasn't until she got to the barracks to meet Nico that she realised it was the first time he hadn't corrected her for calling him Percy instead of Perseus.

Warmth spread from her heart throughout her chest. It was a step.

OoOoO

'I hope this works,' said Nico, squinting at the cave system on the western edge of the Underworld. 'Percy's weird as Perseus.'

'I hope so, too.'

'I think that's the one,' he said, pointing. Annabeth couldn't see how this particular cave was different from the others, but Nico probably knew best. They approached the entrance, carved into the dark volcanic rock. The temperature dipped ten degrees when they crossed the threshold. Annabeth shivered, glad she'd thought to bring her jacket.

The pool lay in a round depression at the centre of the cave. At its edge was a series of altars, ten in total, all made of pure white marble and each bearing a flame. Their flickering light danced over the surface of the pool, creating shadows that shifted continuously in its depths. The middle altar was the highest, shaped like a jagged mountaintop. The others each bore a different carved symbol: a writing tablet, a flute, a lyre, a wreath of myrtle. At the second-last altar, represented by a bugle, a girl wearing a Greek chiton, laced boots, and an ivy wreath in her wispy hair was tending the fire.

'Mnemosyne?' Annabeth asked.

'Great Olympus, no!' said the girl, shuddering. 'Please don't mistake me for my mom. That's like, gross.'

'Sorry. You must be—'

She turned to them with an impish look on her round face. 'Thalia. Muse of comedy, at your service. Are either of you looking for a good laugh?'

'Not particularly,' Nico said. 'We're looking for your mother.'

'What do you want with her? Seriously, she's boring. And old.'

'Aren't you like three thousand years old?' Annabeth pointed out.

'Yeah, but mom's three thousand and thirty.'

'Thalia!' Mnemosyne emerged, sliding out of a crevice in the cave wall that Annabeth hadn't even noticed. 'I should snip off your disrespectful tongue.'

Thalia poked the offending appendage at her mother. Mnemosyne crossed her arms and stared at Annabeth and Nico. Unlike her plump daughter, she was tall and thin, with thick bronze hair. Her expression was the very definition of resting bitch face: grumpy pursed lips and bored-looking eyes.

'Son of Hades,' she noted, 'and a daughter of Athena. Well, what do you need to remember?'

'How did you know—'

Mnemosyne rolled her eyes. 'Everyone who comes here wants to remember something. That's all anyone prays to me for now. Time was, I'd get sacrifices for poetry and healing and clarity of vision, but noooo, now it's just "Mnemosyne, I need to remember where I put my keys," or "Mnemosyne, can you come up with a good way to memorise the periodic table?"'

'Well, you did let Calliope and Erato handle the poets,' Thalia said.

'I know that!' Mnemosyne snapped. 'I remember.'

'We're here for healing,' Annabeth said quickly. 'I know about your collaboration with Asclepius. The ancient Greeks prayed to both of you together.'

'Those were the days,' Mnemosyne agreed. 'What is it you need, then?'

'Your pool—we were hoping it would bring back lost memories.'

'Lost memories, huh?' Mnemosyne glided over to the edge of her pool. She put one finger in it and stirred the waters. The surface rippled and Annabeth saw, to her surprise, her father peering down at a baby in a golden basket. Mnemosyne stirred again and the image changed to a young Nico running hand-in-hand across a cobblestone path with an olive-skinned girl—his sister, Bianca. Nico paled and swallowed hard.

'Which one of you is searching, then?' Mnemosyne asked.

'Neither,' Annabeth said. She explained about Percy and his predicament. Mnemosyne's expression didn't change, but her eyes seemed slightly sadder.

'And you heard about the pool's power to recover memories,' Mnemosyne said. 'It's not untrue, but there's a procedure to follow.'

'Well, whatever it is, we can do it!'

Mnemosyne shook her head. 'You don't understand. This is a pool, not a river. It does not mingle with the waters of the Lethe. The only way to use my pool to retrieve memories that the Lethe has taken is to drink from it before you drink from the Lethe.'

Annabeth's heart plummeted to her knees. 'Surely there's something you can do?'

Thalia clasped her hands together. 'Come on, Mom, her story's so tragic. Let's make it happier.'

'He drank Lethe mixed with nectar,' Nico added. 'Would that change anything?'

Mnemosyne considered this for a moment. It would be better if he had drank Lethe mixed with water from the spring of memory. But perhaps…' She crossed to the centre altar and placed her hand over the burning flame. After a few seconds, a small vial materialised in it. Mnemosyne plucked it out of the fire and brought it over to Annabeth and Nico.

'This is the most purified of my pool's waters,' she said. 'Mix two parts with one part nectar and let it steep for three days. That's the most potent cure I can offer. Perhaps if your friend's memories have not yet flowed all the way to Chaos, it may work.'

Annabeth clasped the vial to her heart. 'Thank you,' she said fervently.

'Yes, well, it's nice to be asked for something more meaningful these days. One does get sick of all the prayers about rote memorisation…' She shuddered. 'Thalia, did you remember to clean your altar?'

With the abrupt change in subject, Annabeth guessed she and Nico were dismissed. As they left the cave, she heard Thalia complaining, 'Yes, mom, stop nagging.'

'Well, remember that century you neglected it?'

'Mom, that was millennia ago! And besides, Melpomene said she'd cover for me.'

'And you saw what happened—all the Greeks ever wrote from that era was tragedy.'

'I'm going to take it as a good sign that we ran into the Muse of comedy instead of the Muse of tragedy,' Nico commented.

Annabeth laughed. 'Thanks, Nico. Let's hope this works.'

OoOoO

Even without Mnemosyne's potion, things were already looking up. Percy seemed to take their agreement to practise sword-fighting as a peace offering, and their interactions at home were less stilted. He wasn't exactly opening up to Annabeth yet, but he did appear in the common areas more often, helping himself to the big pot of coffee she made in the morning and even popping into the living room for a short chat one evening when she was eating pizza and catching up on the assignments she'd neglected. They didn't speak of anything significant, just inane small talk about his day, but the fact that he'd sought her out and started the conversation…

She started to realise that the less she offered him, the more willing he was to approach her instead.

Their lessons began the day after her return from Mnemosyne's pool. Annabeth quickly realised that while Percy's memory of using Riptide was gone, his skill with the sword remained. And his natural fighting style was Greek. No wonder he hadn't felt comfortable with the Roman instructor's teaching.

By their second day of training, Annabeth was already starting to feel challenged sparring with Percy. Every move she'd shown him, he'd picked up with ease. It didn't take an afternoon for him to move past competency to proficiency.

On the third day, Mnemosyne's potion was ready.

They both had class in the afternoon, so they'd agreed to have their lesson in the morning. Percy came down to the kitchen looking a little bleary-eyed and poured himself a mug of coffee. He took a gulp and made a face.

'Out of milk today?'

'Oh, sorry,' she said. 'I did it the usual way.'

'The usual way?'

'I like my coffee black,' she explained.

'But you've been making it with milk…' His face closed off, and Annabeth realised her mistake. She'd been making him coffee the way he liked it—the way she knew he liked it.

It didn't seem to matter how many concessions she consciously made—removing her stuff from his room, letting him make the first move, even taking off her camp necklace so he wouldn't see something they shared—she'd more easily cut off her own arm than succeed at cutting Percy out of her soul.

'Perseus,' she said, hoping the use of the name he favoured now would signal a compromise. 'Before we go for training, I need to tell you something.'

His expression was guarded. 'What is it?'

Annabeth explained about her and Nico's visit to Mnemosyne and the potion they'd made from the pool.

'It might be what you need to bring your memories back. Your memories, not something we've told you or what the empousa planted in your head.'

'A drink,' he said. And then, more wistfully, 'My memories.'

'It might not work,' Annabeth warned him, although she was banking everything on its success. 'Mnemosyne said that if your memories have gone out to Chaos, they're really gone. But this was the most potent memory cure she could give us. I—I hope you'll try it.'

A deep crease appeared between Percy's eyebrows. 'You're not gonna make me drink it?'

'They're your memories, aren't they?' Annabeth said in surprise. 'It's your decision.'

Percy looked her in the eye, a long searching gaze. Finally, he said, 'Okay, what the heck. Let's try this thing.'

Annabeth's heart pounded as she passed him the flask where they'd mixed Mnemosyne's potion. After taking a deep breath, Percy downed it in one gulp.

They waited thirty seconds, a minute, two. The air hung heavy in the room, weighted with expectation. Annabeth's hope was like a balloon, rising slowly through its density. Any moment now…

Then Percy said, 'I don't feel any different.'

'Do you remember—?'

'No,' he said bitterly. 'Nothing.'

Annabeth's balloon of hope exploded into hot, stinging disappointment that coursed miserably through her veins. Tears pricked at her eyes, but she made herself hold them back. If Percy was still Perseus—and it seemed like he would be from now on—the worst thing she could do was show how much it affected her.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I really hoped it would help.'

In the silence, Annabeth wondered what he was thinking. If it had been her Percy, she would have guessed that he was worrying about how she felt about it. But Perseus was different—and he didn't care about her.

At last he said, 'It was worth a shot.' He gave her a tentative smile. 'Thanks for trying.'

Annabeth nodded. 'Well,' she said, casting about for a change of subject, 'I can still teach you swordplay.'

Percy seemed to throw everything he had into the lesson that day. He mastered each move nearly as quickly as she could demonstrate it. When they got to their end-of-session match, it was like fighting Reyna, except harder. With Reyna, if Annabeth could recognise the pattern and style she was using, she could anticipate her opponent's moves and counter them. Percy fought the way he always had: with a wild unpredictability that took all of Annabeth's best reflexes to meet.

It thrilled her. This was the way they had always sparred, a dance that kept her continually on her toes. It was the duel they'd repeated time and again since they were kids at Camp Half-Blood, a familiar tango that, truth be hold, was a huge turn-on for her. Percy's green eyes were alert and bright, his face so alive as he slashed and struck and countered and parried. He wasn't even fighting using her instructions any more, but with his own instincts.

It ended when she attempted a tricky move and messed it up. She fell back as he knocked her sword out of her hand. Her feet caught Percy's as she went down. He landed on top of her, pinning her to the ground in an unorthodox victory.

'I think I win,' Percy said.

His hair was completely mussed up, his bangs plastered across his sweaty forehead. His eyes sparkled with exhilaration. His face was flushed and he was breathing heavily, but his mouth quirked in a familiar sardonic smile, with that one lopsided dimple denting his right cheek.

This was her Percy. Memory or no memory, he was still in there.

Annabeth couldn't help herself. She reached up and kissed him.

Yes, a cliffy. Yes, I'm evil. But next update is coming this evening ... so maybe not that evil? :)

In the mean time, check out @preciouschildrenofolympus’s illustration of The Kiss! <3

A few more notes:

So Reyna basically walked straight into this chapter and wrote herself in. With that coffee scene (and the one with Percy later), I totally have a coffee backstory for all the demigods. I know, I'm nuts.

I'll also have you know that the bit about Mnemosyne was written before TDP came out. I only went back to make some small edits it to make it more compatible. And yes, she does have a daughter named Thalia.

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