#dawntrail is here unlike me :3

[kyriosc]

"Today is self care Friday. Enjoy caring for yourselves."

[charlottedabookworm]

Dawntrail Day 6

spoilers up to: lvl98 msq quest chain (including 4th dungeon) about to start an instanced fight

original draft date: 3/7/24

scheduled release for: 30/7/2024

gonna do a big push before my four hour shift today! 100% aiming for both the 97 and 99 dungeon plus the second trial! i'm hoping i might even get to the level 100 dungeon but that'll depend on how far away it is and how close i am to having to leave for work lol

edit: okay yeah that didn’t happen lol didn’t even make it to the 99 dungeon

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okay but I honestly love the montage of everyone helping to refit the train while the song plays in the background

it’s so much nicer than ‘fade to black and oh look at this remade thing’

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the ram head on the front of the train

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“Vanish!”

raha you’re so cool and that little flair with your stave was just *chefs kiss*

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…how

how am I like this?

once again continuing the trend of stopping literally ten minutes before unlocking a dungeons

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okay erenville i’m really sorry about your home i will be right with you i just need to drive around the entire zone and collect ten aether currents first

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so

are we in another reflection? (unlikely based on that aetheryte and the presence of the station)

or does time just move significantly faster inside the dome and it actually has been decades for them (in which case definitely namikka and possibly erenvilles mum are already dead)?

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yeah during that time you accidently kidnapped the rest of the scions cos you had bad aim with your experimental spell and ended up with thancred spending four years on the first even if he'd only been gone maybe a moon

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oh no we’re headed to erenvilles village this isn’t gonna end well

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mystery trailer woman is here and I don’t trust here

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ali doesn't trust her either great good awesome it isn't just me then

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oh great she rules with zoraal ja so yeah i trust her even less

“we are at odds, he and i”

yeah right i’ll believe it when i see it

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30 years

Wow

Okay maybe it was fully Zoraal Ja it makes sense for him to believe him to be dead now

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oh no

that’s namikka

fuck she’s about to do in front of wuk lamat after she’s already watched her father die and fuck-

fuck i was really hoping she’d already died

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“My memories of her have been stored in the cloud”

….great

so you just. forget everyone who dies and those memories go to the cloud huh

wonderful

(I hate this place)

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…erenvilles mum is now a robot

great

this won’t be traumatic for him at all

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I do notice that none of the people in this- resistance base? They look like a resistance to me

anyway none of them are wearing the soul thing that removes your memories to the cloud

which can only be good

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ali just continuing to be a massive mood this expansion love that for her

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and where do they get the souls for the soul cells huh? this isn’t a new system

the souls they stole from tuliyolall wouldn’t be neough

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look as much as the soul thing wigs me the fuck out and i find the memory wiping abhorrent i’m all for it being a part of their culture i can respect that

that’s fine that’s cool that’s whatever

but at the very least zoraal ja is stealing souls from those outside of the dome to use in this system and that is wrong

if your culture deals in souls then fine until you start stealing souls

even if - and it’s a big if since no one is mentioning it - all the souls in use in alexandria were given voluntarily it doesn’t excuse them taking the souls of the tuliyoli they slaughtered when they invaded and i know that’s zoraal ja but still

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solution nine time baaaaby!

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ah so she was the voice to speak to zoraal ja at the entrance to the golden city

Even more reason to not trust her

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the grapes

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...please tell me zoraal ja didn't have kids please

that man is not father material at all

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a topless guy called genolt

wow they don’t even try with that anymore do they lol

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ah cool so zoraal ja probably abandoned his own son great

wish i was surprised but i’m not

poor kid

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oh cahciua named him after gulool ja ja thats so sweet

…monsters don’t attack the kid

aight there’s something up with that

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well those buildings look familiar

hello alexandria

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not loving the amount of stealth sections in the expansion so far ngl

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i am loving the amount of campfire scenes in the expansion so far tho

10/10 would do again

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he says, casually, like this isn't a fucking horror story

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…yeah I thought so

no matter what Cahciua was saying I didn’t think she was alive

and she isn’t if even one of erenvilles old friends doesn’t know her name - memories gone to the cloud after all

poor erenville

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yeah

i can believe that

she has to get the souls to keep the endless alive from somewhere after all

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VRTRA!!!!!!!

and azdaja is with koana!

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“You swore you wouldn’t harm my people!”

and you believed him? sphene what the fuck? exactly why did you expect the guy who agreed to help you kill everyone outside the barrier (despite it being his home) to stick to your agreement?

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damn okay i’ve made it to an instance that says it’ll save my progress but I don’t have time :( guess I know what I’m starting with tomorrow

[mmorpg-escapism]

I was gonna put down a "viper review" post for tonight since that's literally all I did today (leveled to 90 for DT analysis tomorrow) but this gives me an excuse to do it AND be helpful. Spoilery stuff below the cut, spoiler-free review first:

Viper feels extremely smooth to play, with fancy animations and a surprisingly intuitive rotation as long as you're able to see and poke the shiny combo indicated buttons. I knew the minute I saw the preview that I wanted to take it through Dawntrail, and I was NOT disappointed in the slightest by how good it felt to pick up and play for the first time.

And now the detailed Long Post about it for @stardustdiver - I hope this helps somewhat, even if it's just the TL;DR at the end. I hyperfixated a little in my sleepiness... 🙃

TL;DR: Start with oGCD rotation, then into regular ST or AoE rotation emphasizing keeping your Noxious Gnash debuff on your target(s) as first priority, then maintaining your own buffs second. If the action name contains "Dread", it applies the "take more damage" debuff, "Hunter" for the damage buff, and "Swiftskin" for the action speed buff. Combo indicators will do the heavy lifting for getting you to the right combo finisher to do the most damage.

Now for the "long": I'll break down single target, then AoE, then oGCDs. It's a lot of the same stuff in different shapes, really.

Viper's starting rotation is pretty neat. Basically, your 1-2-3 combo is actually a 6 button combo that they've mashed into two. As far as I can tell, the job gauge is just a visual indicator. Steel Fangs corresponds to the left blade on the gauge, and Dread Fangs corresponds to the right blade. I set them to 1 and 2 on my hotbar, respectively, so it's easy to match them up to the gauge.

They each become buttons with other effects on them. Steel becomes Hunter's Sting which gives you Hunter's Instinct, a 40s damage buff (10%), and Dread becomes Swiftskin's Sting which gives you Swiftscaled, a 40s recast/cast/auto attack speed buff (15%). After those are cast, you get one of two choices: a pair of Flank- attacks, or Hind- attacks, based on if you hit Swiftskin or Hunter for combo part 2

When the ST rotation starts, open with Dread Fangs. It applies a Noxious Gnash debuff to your target, not unlike Reaper's mark, that lasts for 20s and can stack up to 40s. It's important to keep this up however you can - the oGCD rotation hits it as well, and that's also what you should open with for some burst. From there, I prefer Swiftkin's Sting, which speeds up the rest of your rotation, and then the finisher choice only matters in that it grants a 40s buff that determines what your next 3rd button has to be by buffing its' potency by 100.

The combo indicators guide you to the right one for your buff, so you don't really have to think about it. But I like to, so... in my practical 1-2 keybind example, I'm pressing 2-2-2 (rear), then 2-1-1 (flank), then 1-2-1 (rear), then 1-1-1 (flank), then looping that until my oGCDs are available for a burst. Basically, the starting button doesn't matter, the second button gives you a buff and determines which positional you're getting, and the third button determines your next positional. Hunter's Sting will always give you flank positionals, and Swiftskin's Sting will always give you rear positionals.

Similarly, for the AoE rotation, the start doesn't matter except for making sure Noxious Gnash is applied (Steel Maw doesn't, Dread Maw does), the second button gives you the Swiftscaled or Hunter's Instinct Buffs, and the last button improves the other AoE combo. The combo indicators on the bar guide you here, too.

At the end of any 3-button run through ST or AoE, Serpent's Tail will change to Death Rattle (ST) or Last Lash (AoE) for an oGCD hit you can press before starting anew.

oGCDs are slightly more complicated, but follow the same pattern for both styles so I'll condense it a little. Press the button that has two charges (Dreadwinder for ST or Pit of Dread for AoE), press one of the newly lit up buttons (Coil options for ST, Den options for AoE), press the transformed Twinfang and Twinblood buttons (Bite for ST, Thresh for AoE) as they light up, press the other Coil or Den button, press the Twinfang/Twinblood buttons as they light up, and you're done. You get the two 40s buffs AND a single application of Noxious Gnash out of this rotation, and can do it twice. Open with at least one round of this before jumping into the "regular" combo.

At 82, you get Uncoiled Fury which is a massive ST hit with reduced damage for nearby targets that you can activate after each press of Dreadwinder or Pit of Dread. I prefer to use it at the end of the oGCD burst to cap it off and remind myself to press the other buttons, but I have no idea how optimal that is. At 86 you'll get a button that gives you a free charge of Uncoiled Fury.

I've not really played with the stuff unlocked at 90 yet, but there's more button transformation stuff coming and I'm excited to figure it out.

vague viper stuff

if anyone been playing viper has some tips for like, rotations (mainly the 123 because theres so many paths they could go and the buffs they give, not so much the ocgd combo) and also what the blue and the yellow and the left half and the right half of the gauge means? i figured out the red gems part of the gauge

im lvl 83 currently