#I am still struggling to build Acheron

[racecarcat]

Have I ever mentioned how much I love Misha? No? Well, I absolutely adore him and I am this close to building him instead of my Acheron. He’s my son. He’s little. I wanna squish him until he pops affectionately.

This is frustration from building Acheron (I love her but my saga of building her is WILD) and I want to change my pfp to Misha. Bc I’ve been listening to his voice lines nonstop. Maybe if I E6 him I like I did Yukong.

[nekoprankster218]

ngl this 2.1 boss has killed all the goodwill HSR has built up for me

it’s not just that this is the worst designed boss I’ve ever encountered

it’s that this has really opened my eyes to a fatal flaw in HSR that may flip people’s perspective on it. it feels like I’m punished for not building *every* character, for not going through the grind for every character in the archive. my best teams that carried me throughout all of penacony are struggling against this one boss and all the characters I’ve seen recommended to fix this are all underlevel and half-built, and I’m broke when it comes to Trailblaze power because of all the previous building I’ve done for the previous teams, plus for *starting* the building on the Acheron, Gallagher, and Gepard I just got, and now I have to do *more* building for *more* teams.

at least with Genshin I can build like two teams max and be comfortable for the rest of the game. I am stuck. on a *story boss*. because I have a bunch of built teams that get TPK at the new mechanics and a bunch of teams with the potential to pass the mechanics that are all still underlevel. and there’s no downgrading the EQ level to make the boss a bit squishier or a Quick Start option so I can at least still take part in the upcoming event while I wait on building.

past story bosses also had this issue, but back then things were still so new that it just felt like I needed to build, needed more time to rank up, and then the future would be less challenging. now I’m starting to get this feeling that is gonna be a chronic problem for the rest of the game and idk if I can keep doing this grind song and dance every time a new boss demands a new team I had no idea I needed to prioritize while also needing to spend days and weeks building that new team because of this goddamn stamina system, all while watching event timers tick down and dodging YouTube thumbnail spoilers.

[sleepy-aletheas]

post 2.3 ramblings

I love the mindbending ability any dream-reality story is build on, but damn, is Penacony flaring up my paranoia and just leaves me cynical about any and everything.

(These are just my on-going observations and musings, so really, it's more like an unhinged red-string-on-the-wall moment for me since the start of 2.0 all the way here. I'm so delighted, but damn, is it putting my brain into a constant loop.)

It's not even necessarily the fault of a "too ideal ending" or "that was a fast wrap up". I don't need to see the stellaron be dealt with on-screen (neither did it happen in Belobog or Luofu, so I didn't expect it to happen here either), but it's always brushed off as us just being deeply asleep while its been dealt with, and no one wanting to wake us up (and TB asking if they're still asleep is also a thing to note. Makes my paranoia feel validated, because the mc is also paranoid).

Then there is March, and oh boy, am I the most suspicious of her, cause this doesn't feel like March at all. It's like a caricature, or someone trying their best to be March from a very surface level, but never really landing the mark right. Her being there every time we wake up from a dream (be it Ena's or then after Sunday), and avoiding elaborating on stuff, just pushing us on with the plot. Her being like "I dreamed of shopping until a tentacle yanked me out of there" (I'm paraphrasing here) makes no sense at all to me — if everyone was stuck in a dream of an ideal reality, her "just shopping" wouldn't scratch the surface of her character; she is always struggling with her past and lost/blocked memories, her purpose and identity, and you wanna tell me her dream didn't give her anything of that? Doubt. The closest true March we got was when we stood to bid farewell to Mikhail, and her monologue — that is our March, someone who struggles with her sense of belonging in the grander scheme of things, who clings to memories and moments because she only has the time on the Express.

Doesn't help, that no one mentioned the Annihilation Gang, like, at all. We were made aware they're gonna be there. One of them directly talked to Black Swan, but now it's quiet? No destructive shenanigans? No plotting from the shadows? Nothing? Where did they go?

On the matter of destruction — there is a black hole sucking in all the memoria and making the dream slowly collapse, and no one is concerned? There is that one NPC, but otherwise there is no panic, no active plan on how to handle it. Micah will keep up the peace in Dreamflux Reef, but the blackhole we got a perfect view of is...not a problem? The Dreamweavers also aren't really solving that issue either, instead they are just building more on top over everything, not going to the core of the problem to deal with it.

Also with the whole waking up from a dream to wake up from a dream to wak- you get, it's such a mess, because unless we leave Asdana for good, we cannot ever be sure what is a dream and what is reality. Non of these characters are reliable narrators. All of them are swimming in memoria. The closest beings capable of moving around aware of this are Memokeepers (and possibly Ratio and Acheron, for one is Ratio and the other walks the path of Nihility, so that makes it complicated, cause we don't know their limits and capabilities, ugh), but Black Swan is keeping her cards close to her chest and rather pushes others to do stuff while she slinks around observing.

Not to say, that nothing that is happening is inconsequential or unimportant — many things are a true concern or possibility to happen (the Express running out of fuel, the IPC trapping Penacony into a deal, the Express being chosen as mediators between the factions, because of course they would be), neither do I think the interaction between the characters is a delusion, I think they are acting as they would outside Asdana and their dynamics are real (except March, there just is something about her that makes me feel antsy whenever she is around; I got more trust in Sparkle than her at this point, and that's so funny to me). It's like, the information is true about people and other places, because these are thoughts and memories brought to Asdana from the outside, but the happenings in the star system are too convoluted to really be confident in saying "this is what is truly happening", because we cannot know for sure. Not now, not until we get out, or until the memoria is handled in one way or another.

Conclusion: Penacony is playing with my mind so much, I cannot trust anything until it's all actually resolved. It's fun and makes my brain buzz with energy and zest, so that's great. And even if technically Penacony's story is at the end, there are just too many plot points staying unresolved or need to be expanded upon, nothing was truly explained and only left me with more questions. Maybe I just need more time to ruminate over it all.