#everyone gets pretty good phys skills

[kumakuma-circus]

i feel like chie's the weirdest p4 party member when it comes to battle. like she's good don't get me wrong but like. the investigation team doesn't have THAT much overlap in elements all things considered - everyone gets phys (except yukiko i think), a couple party members get instakills, naoto's the only real overlap (discounting yu, since otherwise he at least has overlap with kanji) since they get everything.

but. both of chie's specialties are covered by other party members. namely kanji and teddie. and they both do those things better than her. kanji has worse magic but he has better phys skills, and teddie actually gets higher level ice skills separately from his social link and bike rides, on top of being a healer.

i do like chie but i unfortunately think she's kind of MEANT to be replaced-

[jothsdump]

A Hypothetical Tokyo Mirage Sessions 2

I unironically really like tokyo mirage sessions and would really like a continuation in some form. Eventually I came up with an idea for my own sequel and what the main characters would be like.

Featuring duo protagonists and Mirages of Characters from Gaiden and Sacred Stones. I haven't settled on Masters' names yet, so these are place holders.

Naoto- A young man 19-20 who bonds with the Mirage Ephraim. As a child he dreamed of becoming the lead actor for a superhero show. Since his parents were both in the entertainment industry, he seemed to have a pretty good job. But the stresses from working in the industry and his demanding father caused him to abandon his dream. By the start of the game he works as the delivery boy for a ramen shop. It's there he meets a certain idol and soon finds himself swept up into the world of Mirages.

Mai- A young woman about 18-19 who bonds with the Mirage Celica. An aspiring composer who starts out as a member of a 3 girl idol group. 5 years ago her covers of anime ops and insert songs got her scouted by an idol agency. She didn't want to be an idol, but took the opportunity to get a foot in the door in the industry. Sadly, her strict managers have restrained her reaching outside of idol pop, and even making her own song for the band. Decides to quit, to the shock of most everyone around her. Unfortunately, one of her group-mates becomes the target of an evil mirage and Mai and the delivery boy she just met get pulled into the idolasphere...

Mirage Ephraim- like the Miraged from the original, he lacks knowledge and memory of his nature and situation. However, he still remembers his twin sister Eirika and his friend Lyon. His carnage forms make Naoto into a sturdy physical attacker, similar to Yashiro and Navarre, with access to counter skills and single target fire and thunder phys skills. Either when he promotes to a Great Lord, or from the start, he'll be a cavalry unit with a sick motorcycle "horse" like Cain in the og.

Mirage Celica- like Ephraim, her memories of the past are damaged. But she destinctly remembers Alm and her relation with him. As well as that she's a priestess of the divine dragon Mila. In the Mirage Sanctuary she identifies the sculptures of dragon Mila and Duma by name. Celica's carnage form is a sword and Mai and her has a more balanced stat-spread like Itsuki and Chrom. But with a greater focus on attack magic and more elemental variety, specifically fire wind and light.

I have a lot more to share, but will end it here for this post

[volivolition]

hello we return to ramble about music because music is one of our biggest hyperfixations ever. hai [Do let us know if you're ever tired of us sharing music though Shauaiakdjcjsjdfj]

Do you have a favourite song? A favourite band or musician? PLEASE do share if so, we're always looking for new music especially from friends!!

We have!!! song reccs for you :] Song for the Dead and Song for the Deaf, both by Queens of the Stone Age! Both songs are very red to us [we have synesthesia] and they remind us collectively of Phys Instrument and I!

-PT

HAI HELLO!! my music friends the furies!! (hjfkjh dont worry, i love hearing from you!! :D <33)

2. ooh, thank you PT, i was just listening to Song for the Dead on the subway the other day, it sounded so cool!! i assumed it was a Physique vibe, but so cool to hear who exactly :D im listening to Song for the Deaf now, just really good guitar for both of these songs, the words are sung more lyrical in this one :0 the ending is amusing, just silence and then laughing to the instrumental hdkjh <3 extremely red vibes, you're so right for this <3 thank you for sharing the PT and Fizzy songs :D <33

1. oh god i have to put this under a cut. tl;dr: my current favorite song is Too Sweet by Hozier because it reminds me of Voli and Chemi :]!!

hgkjh did you know my bio used to say "i can relate any hozier song to disco elysium"? the statement is hyperbole, but i love hozier so fuckin much heres just a bunch of nonsense:

"Too Sweet" is a volistry song. to me. ("I take my whiskey neat~" "My coffee black and my bed at three...") echem thinks voli's too uptight ("You keep telling me to live right / to go to bed before the daylight... / but then you wake up for the sunrise... / don't you just want to wake up... / lost in a haze?") and voli thinks echem is too hedonistic ("If you're drunk on life-" "Babe, I think it's great~" "But while in this world... / I aim low / I aim true and the ground's where I go / I work late where I'm free from the phone / And the job gets done / But you worry some, I know.") and in this way they're "too sweet (morally/indulgently)" for each other, but they fall in love around the "You know, you're bright as the morning, soft as the rain" "Pretty as a vine, as sweet as a grape" mark because they start to balance each other out so they're not overworking/refusing all joy and not giving in to every temptation/dangerously ignoring health and responsibility for dopamine and they're GOOD FOR EACH OTHER... im. not normal about them ever i could write essays about them :'] (also the bells in the chorus just hit different i love that shit man...)

i've been meaning to draw Echem with the song "Angel of Small Death and the Codeine Scene" just for the title alone lmao... but it's absolutely a bop and i enjoy it :]

"Jackie and Wilson" is TRULY LIKE. IS ANYONE SEEING THIS. "Cut clean from the dream at night / let my mind reset / Looking up from a cigarette and he's already left" "He'll know me crazy, soothe me daily, better yet, he wouldn't care / We'll steal his Lexus / be detectives / ride 'round picking up clues" IS ANYONE ELSE HEARING THIS THAT'S FUCKING HARRY AND KIM. HELLO??

my other alternate bio used to read "From Eden is such a de song. if you even care" i need everyone to listen to this and tell me its not a disco elysium song ogughgjkh!!! "Honey, you're familiar / Like my mirror years ago" "Innocence died screaming" "A rope in hand for your other man to hang from a tree" HOZIER MY MAN YOU DID IT BUDDY THAT'S THE GAME!!!

i can perfectly imagine which skill is singing which line to harry in "Almost (Sweet Music)" as he gets over dora and falls in love with kim. imagine them smoking on the balcony together while the skills swirl around them, invisible to kim but nudging harry and each other.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Success] - Let's get lost and let the good times roll! SAVOIR FAIRE [Medium: Success] - Let's smoke rings from this paper, doll~ SUGGESTION [Medium: Success] - Blow sweet and thick 'til every thought of it don't mean a thing. PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Medium: Success] - I got some color back. EMPATHY [Easy: Success] - He thinks so too... INLAND EMPIRE [Formidable: Success] - I laugh like me again... She laughs like you. RHETORIC [Legendary: Failure] - I wouldn't know where to start... PERCEPTION [Medium: Success] - Sweet music playing in the dark. VOLITION [Godly: Success] - *Be still*, my foolish heart- COMPOSURE [Challenging: Success] - Don't ruin this on me...

"First Time" is harry and dora ("the first time that you kissed me / i drank dry the river lethe" YOU MEAN THE GREEK RIVER THAT MAKES YOU FORGET EVERYTHING HOZIER???), "Eat Your Young" is truly a Disco Elysium vibe song of political ideology, do i even have to mention "Take Me to Church" for the idolization of Dora? and "Like Real People Do" [just straight up starts sobbing on the floor.] when the... the two people with similarly sad pasts learn to grow and heal together... we should just kiss like real people do... fucking hell man...

i also like!! AJR (current fave: Inertia [waltz time my adored]), The Oh Hellos (Hieroglyphs [the beat! the melody! the lyrics! singing together! ough my love... i miss choir]), The Altogether (See The Day [makes me cry. volition song i think]), American Authors (Luck [longtime favorite]), and Ricky Montgomery (currently it's Cabo but god this man's got bops. This December. Line Without a Hook. Get Used to It. Snow [<- desaturated blue song]. My Heart is Buried in Venice. okay thats it i promise hdkjh)

[oracleofsecrets]

Playing Final Fantasy II

Part of the Quest to play all 16 FF games

(Side note, I love Yoshitaka Amano's cunty character-fashion designs for the early games)

(Also, some of my "reviews" of the series are less detailed bc I either didn't have a lot of thoughts or I'm working only off of short notes I made Several Months ago)

Firsts: 

Scripted battle at the beginning where you die no matter what 

Using Healing spells to damage undead enemies

Bombs enemy :( 

Toad status effect lol 

Dragoons!

Cid. Did not know who he was exactly

The Leveling System: Instead of a traditional exp to level up to predetermined stat increases, stat increases come from using and leveling up skills, spells, and weapons in battle. It did allow for a little more flexibility beyond rpg Classes; it was handy being able to have bruisers learn a few buffs

Worsts:

The Leveling system. 

It is Such a pain trying to level up spells, since they’re also acquired by buying them in towns throughout the game. So when you get The Most Powerful Spell in the endgame, you start with it at level 1 and have to grind a lot, where that character is casting it all the time. 

At least this system was swiftly abandoned for the remainder of the series

General Impressions

A character-driven story here (vs. generic avatars in the first game), something I always enjoy. But goodness those kids have seen a Lot of war horrors…

Having a rotating “guest” fourth party member kept things interesting, if a little annoying (Gordon why do you suck so baddddd)

Loved the design of Pandaemonium hell palace…. Ourble… 

Mechanics/misc.

I liked that multi-target magic wasn’t a separate spell like it was in FFI. Targeting multiple enemies/people does weaken how much damage/healing it does, though.

Pretty tricky final boss! Trying to keep everyone alive so that Maria could cast Ultima was a struggle when she was also my best healer. His big phys hits that heal himself were RUDE. But I got it on the first try! 

Rating: 2/16

The same remarks with FFI (interesting as a sort of history lesson, but not always fun to play from a modern perspective). The story complexity is enjoyable, but the leveling is too much of a drag

[prettyboykatsuki]

wld it be okay to ask for the specifics of ur robins relics nd such, i literally do not know how to build charas </3

sure !! they're not very good tho sdkjskd

w robin there r a few like main things to look out for. the first is that she's built off of attack so. u want to stack a shit ton of atk% on her. her best sets are just the general attack sets. i would not recommend using phys. dmg bonus on her. she's a support tho she also needs speed. everyone needs speed tho. there r guides for how that match works but 134 /143 is a more realistic number to try to hit. (160 (or maybe 161 i cant rmb) is ideal for supports but SUPER unrealistic dfkjsjd)

im running the speed set + wild west set. 2. all w attack percent. bc of her ult. 2 pieces of each. the substats aside from atk% and speed r not important, though effect res. is also nice for supports imo. u could give her crit substats but its a waste since her kit is not built to be sub-dps like luocha. its better to give a support like her effect res., hp%, or def% etc

her ultimate cost is higher than other supports so she needs energy regen. as much as humanly possible. energy regen rope + spring vonwacq set is a must and i would recommend maxing her rope to 15+ if u have the resources. in general u dont need to get her relics past 12 lvls since its expensive and the jump is not that huge.

her best 4-star lightcone u get from the clockie editing event and u get all the super impositions playing. her best is obvs her lightcone but i dont think its worth pulling if ur f2p (even tho i want to bc shes so beautiful in it. FUCK). in general play the event before building her since it gives u a lot of resources for her traces

for her traces pour into her skill + ult. all of her bonus abilities r pretty good and i would highly recommend unlocking all of them if u can 👍🏾 her kit is rlly stacked 👍🏾

if u want more info on any of this or how speed breakpoints work let me know but ye

[laysdimplesareillegal]

NCT as High School Teachers

Y’ALL IT’S FINALLY HERE

So I saw a thibg on instagam that said nct as teachers so lets go

We’re going by age so I know I get all of them but I also don’t know all of them too well. I’m literally so upset I cant do xiaojun because I love him but I also don't know him well enough I’m sorry honey. also some of these I really pulled out of nowhere so they might be way the frick off

Taeil

I think he’s like one of those teachers who loves his job and wants his students to love his class but like he teaches selectively at the end of the day and they just want to go home

Teaches like language arts or some sort of literature

Is so happy to teach everyday

Johnny

Everyone's best friend

Knows every bit of gossip going on in school

Nobody knows what his job is

Meanders around campus all day

Knows your name somehow

Taeyong

Teaches something to help improve life skills like speech or something. Teaches Home Ec.

Loves his students and wants to be involved in their lives

Pretends like he’s not listening to all the student’s gossip so he hears it all

Gets bombarded in the teacher’s lounge on what’s happening (needs to be cajoled)

Surprised by all the scandalous things his students get themselves into

Yuta

We all knew this was coming

The hot substitute teacher

Works like once a semester

When he comes to work the whole school is rocked and he knows it

Walks around the classroom all day like sir why are you strutting

Sits with his feet up on the desk

Kun

Probably wants to be a really good and strict teacher

But the kids know they can walk all over him

Senior teacher

So when the seniors are informal with him so are the rest of the students

Doyoung

Scary

Extremely silent classroom you could hear a pin drop on the carpet

But like then he’s seen around the other teachers and he's so smiley

Either lectures and notes or busy work

Will not. Under any circumstances. Allow friends to sit next to each other.

Ten

“Do whatever you want, I don’t care”

Art teacher

So he can do whatever he wants, pass kids, and gets paid to use the school’s art supplies

Scolds kids who insult other kids’ artwork

Randomly subs for PE one day and makes the students learn dance

Jaehyun

Honestly idk probably an elective

His class is pretty average just like any other

But wow sir hello

Everyone is in love with him

Is besties with Taeyong and like wow what a pair Probably has a movie day like at least once a month

Winwin

Mysterious

Likes select students who will then learn that he likes stuff like ballet and singing

Students only learn about him through Yuta

People take his class cuz they know Yuta will visit him even when he doesn’t work

Well and ya know because its Sicheng

Is a pretty chill teacher

Jungwoo

FRESHMEN TEACHER

Girls literally coo at him instead of doing their work

Wonders why he has to fail students when he doesn’t teach anything

Speaks in tiny and loses control of his class sometimes

Shares a room with another teacher like idk Jaehyun.. Idk why but he does

(I have just been informed that he does in fact share a room with Jaeyun so there you have it)

Lucas

Teaches like P.E.

It’s something he can do and be loud about

Loves shouting orders but he never sounds angry like a normal coach lol

Actually scratch that he can sound angry sometimes

PRETENDS to be angry and yells then laughs like lol you should see your faces

ALWAYS plays with the students he never stays on the sidelines

Allows you to wear normals clothes not just the ugly gym uniform

Mark

Yes he teaches english

But half the class is just him laughing

Lots of the other teachers visit him

Like Yuta and Haechan

You can hear him from down the hall

I feel like he’s that teacher that has mistakes in his notes or tests or something, like small little spelling errors idk I can just see it

Firmly believes that you learn best by immersion and therefore you watch TV in class ALL THE TIME

Hendery

Drama teacher drama teacher drama teacher

All around good vibes

Finds things funnier than other students do

Truly anything goes in his class

Has never written up a student

Does stuff. Like you’re not the only one up there embarrassing yourself he does it first so y’all aren’t shy

No shyness allowed he will shell you like a pistachio

Renjun

Strict

It’s not even that he wants his students to do well or any dumb excuses like that he’s just strict

He gets teased all the time by the other teachers and his students cower at them

They honestly think it’s his twin brothers talking with the other teachers who is this man

Teaches a language class

So its like you either speak in that language or you don’t speak at all

Really cuts the stupid out of his class

And his class is really difficult for no reason everyone is like “But sir this is 101”

Jeno

Good wholesome teacher everyone can like

I can see him in like home ec

Kids come and talk to him all the time

His tests are so easy you are guaranteed to pass his class with flying colors as long as you know how to spell your name

Haechan

Study hall

Wants to have no responsibility Leaves the classroom all of the time, like he’s never in the classroom

Visits Mark so much

And Johnny so many visits to Mark and Johnny

Jaemin

He probably dabbles a little bit into phys ed

Also enjoys teaching so much

Has a big smile in class all the time

Learned everyone’s names down after the first day of class

Wants everyone to have a good ol’ time

Yangyang

Probably gets along with the younger boys 

Teaches something but people only learn german from him

No learning goes on in his vicinity

I love him but I feel like some people would find him a lil annoying

The jokes never stop

Chenle

Teaches freshmen math

He’s really hit or miss with his students

Sometimes they like him sometimes they don’t get him

I feel like he’s the teacher that always has like a group of students that eat lunch in his room

Always looks so fine like he dresses really well and all

Probably makes you do a lot of group projects I feel

Jisung

The youngest teacher

No one’s sure he’s actually allowed to be a teacher because he’s very discreet with his timeline like nobody knows his age but he has a mysterious amount of degrees

Like no one knows the details of his life he’s just there

Was mistaken as a student on multiple occasions

[witch-hazels-musings]

hey hazel! im an ar 55 player so i've had my fair share of boss fights and i've managed to learn a lot of their attacks (though i rely a lot on what azhdaha says in english so it helps if you have english turned on)

(i decided not to make it small like i usually do so everyone can read it clearly :D)

some general tips for fighting azhdaha:

please please PLEASE bring a shield of any kind, most people have noelle and she has a pretty good shield! but trust me, a shield makes this fight a ton easier

in the case that you don't have a shield, that's totally ok! you've just gotta be super careful with your dodging (and BRING A HEALER OR LOTS OF FOOD LOL)

the elements DO matter!! if azhdaha is fire and electro you're gonna want to bring a hydro and cryo based team and as such for other elements

pay attention to the little notifs the game gives you! it'll say something like "azhdaha is about to absorb the power of (element)"

his voicelines are also important: "there is no atonement for a thousand year pain" indicates that he's gonna start stomping" similar to when he absorbs the elemental powers, get as far away from him as you can! you won't survive anywhere near him because his attacks are relentless and won't stop unless he's done absorbing his powers

depending on the element, you'll need to be careful when dodging to avoid getting marked

if the element appears on the ground just focus on dodging those and don't worry about getting a hit in on azhdaha, youll get your chance

for this fight, i like to bring two types of dps: one who hits hard and one whose elemental skill and elemental burst hits hard. this helps for when azhdaha is in his more stagnant position since you have a character that hits hard albeit a bit slower, and when he becomes more of a threat you can switch to your elemental character, tap e and q (depending on who you bring) and boom massive elemental dmg alongside your physical damage with the slower character

some comps i'd recc (no zhongli since the anon said they didnt have zhongli):

razor, sucrose, benny, noelle

kaeya, xiao, xingqiu, benny

beidou, xingqiu, xiangling, diona

these are kinda random but i think the structure i talked about before is here :)

(also if you were curious, im a xiao main but i bring razor, xiao, benny, and zhongli to the fight: razor for phys dmg and xiao for the quick taps of his e)

i hope this helps anyone who's struggling with azhdaha! he's chonky but you can do it!!

- 🌙

Here come the geo dog thing tips!! (I'm gonna butcher is name so ... I'll be over here jotting down the notes!)

[retphienix]

Forgive me while I audibly wrack my head to decide on my party for a second ;-;

So first to consider would be Ryuji who I just, deep in my gut, always want on my party.

The thing is he's falling behind, at least on paper. In practice he's kicking ass, but looking at his stats and moves it's hard to not admit he mostly normal attacks (for decent damage) or tosses out an extremely weak lightning move just to hit a weakness.

He stacks endurance, which is nice, but also I haven't "really" been taking big damage anyway so it's kinda overkill.

His attack is great, but not 'the best'. So it's worth considering.

And his trait actually procs all the damn time- an extra 40% damage on physical attacks is REALLY nice even with my Joker currently playing caster (with a melee focused persona... I ain't bright).

Honestly, his best addition to the team is that trait. It's a HEFTY amount and between Yusuke and himself it's getting a lot of use. It's just a shame his strength isn't a 'bit' higher and he still hasn't learned Assault Dive which will be his first heavy hitting physical move. Most of his skills are kinda duds tbh, some lightning coverage, a lot of phys moves I never use, Rampage for AOE, that's it.

The resolve isn't helping currently since I ambush all the time, and I don't really use his turn to buff so-

Maybe.

Morgana has been benched since the option presented itself (not because I dislike them any) because I don't see much need for so much support on one character I guess.

Their trait couldn't be less interesting to me- more healing is nice but if I need it I'll use a bigger heal, why dedicate a partner trait to it?

Moves are just way too much cleanse. Heals are great, I need em. Wind is good coverage obviously since you can pretty much only count on one coverage type per party member when it comes to direct casting, I don't like crits- fuck Lucky punch, I admittedly under-utilize ailments so that's on ME BUT~! Confuse isn't an ailment I'm interested in anyway so that's a dead move.

Really just dislike that he has both a weak cleanse- and an AOE weak cleanse. The aoe one is nice but it's ONLY Sleep/Dizzy/Forget/Hunger, I can count on one hand how often any one of those has negatively impacted one party member let alone the squad.

Just seems too situational- I know some enemy will come and make it a problem, but far too situational for me to go "I need Morgana on my team all the time!"

Stats aren't even interesting. He's magic oriented but not overly so, so he's fast and can heal half decent, it's not a bad niche but no thank you.

Next.

Ann kinda keeps getting the short straw in combat, but only slightly.

She is arguably a linchpin for my stategies and yet also that usually means she doesn't get to shine lol

She can heal, that's fantastic, I really only need one party member who is able to and she can fill that well.

Fire coverage, nice, no use mentioning the one spell coverage for everyone so just consider that said from here on out.

SLEEP is a godsend. It's a tool I very rarely need, but it's ONE skill slot in her movepool and it can be such an incredible get out of jail free card- ailment spells like that are just so ridiculously accurate in this game- it literally hasn't missed, so it's reliable as heck!

And the other killer move for her is Tarunda- I use that one a LOT. Not for every encounter, but pretty much any encounter that I can't one turn usually has a big fuck who swings melee at me, and she just entirely wipes that threat in one move. I love Tarunda.

And I haven't had a use for it yet, but she knows friggin' DEKAJA? A full team buff removal for the enemy? HOLY HECK that could save my life.

Can't forget her really high magic stat- really nice to spend her off turns just tossing some fire and it actually hurting.

And to top it all off her passive is NUTS.

SP conservation is such a gift when diving into palaces or mementos with the intent of doing everything in one run, and just like Ryuji her SP cost down procs like mad.

I'd argue on a case by case that Ann does the least for my team, but she is just so ridiculously necessary for every fight that falls outside of that range AND she passively lowers my SP expenses on ALL fights, so man.

I think she has her slot, at least as much as Ryuji as I type this.

Unlike the previous characters I have a lot less to say about Yusuke, but not in a bad way.

He hits hard with his sword.

That's it.

Maybe I should pull my head out of my ass and admit that he's become extremely one note on my team, and his passive is forgettable (increase dodge on phys moves, I don't like relying on that), and his magic does no damage beyond coverage, but he really somehow has been keeping his slot through the most unga bunga caveman logic possible.

He Hits Really Hard, like every turn, with basic attacks, with skills, lord if you baton pass him the target is dead.

He has like zero flexibility so any enemy that resists or nullifies physical entirely walls him out, but MAN.

Also Goemon is cool. But mostly it's him just casually farting out 400+ damage when everyone else can do like 150.

Damn it, it's feeling like Yusuke's slot is loosening up as I admit all that though.

And finally, the newcomer Makoto.

Outside of her kit I just want to take her along for the same reason I wanted to take Yusuke- she's new, I want to bring her along for her dungeon at the very least.

Now her kit is...

I ain't supremely impressed, yet it's so balanced that I'm not mad about it.

Coverage, yep got that.

An AOE medium phys move out the gate, that's convenient.

Stats leave a LOT to be desired because they are so balanced- there's no strength or weakness to consider.

Med heal out the gate, nice, evens out to making her an adequate healer despite her stats.

Defense buff, not my thing, wasting a turn for a solo def buff just really isn't my thing especially since I'm not taunting or whatever so I can't direct the enemy to attack my buffed party member unlike using Tarunda on the offending ENEMY member.

Solo target Forget is... fine? I under-utilize ailments like I said, but Forget IS a nice one that forces auto attacks instead of spells. There's some synergy in the idea of forgetting the enemy and buffing defense, but like, nah. Best I can say is it'd be a nice combo tool with Tarunda if she works alongside Ann.

And to cap it off her trait is... well it might actually be pretty interesting.

Unlike strictly 'ailments' ELEMENTAL ailments IE Burn/Freeze/Shock are pretty nice and can lead to technical attacks!

I've been getting a ton of use out of the free High Shock gun Joker gets because of that for instance.

So her passive raising the chance to inflict those 3 elemental blights by 25% isn't bad at all and could actually end up being the most impactful thing she brings to the table.

I think... she might end up taking Yusuke's place as a less impactful damage dealer but a great element channeler for the squad.

Okay yeah this helped figure things out.

Joker/Ryuji/Ann/Makoto it is.

[dourpeep]

So like, whose your favorite chars and ships and roles? *rolls all over your blog* I know you like albedo, as you should, but I feel like your big brain hides hidden potential of reasons

Ehe I have a lot to say and a lot of people to go through so...most will be under the cut. Like this is really just going to be me going on about what I like about a bunch of characters.

My works are a love letter to the characters nodnod y'know that quote--

Oh!! Okay okay uhhh here's a few of my faves and reasons:

Albedo:

There's a lot of similar interests-! Also being an alchemist/scientist is my dream.

His personality is very sweet and his interactions with others (like during the Golden Apple Archipelago) are hilarious and endearing. Like...the whole slipping away while Diluc and Kaeya were bickering? His little comment hinting that he had to yell at them while riding Dvalin due to the wind and their volume? Then every interaction with Klee (including his character trailer) are so wholesome uuuuu

Albedo, my beloved-

His outfit!! I want to get Albedo cosplay just for the jacket

Also his movements, attack wise, are very polished and clean-cut! It's pretty obvious that his style is similar to that of fencing, but then you also see that he often will condense his sword into pure geo or thrust it out in a burst of gold!! And his Q???? He snaps and then his burst just---bursts fourth out of the ground???

Man's skilled.

And then ehe...I just really am into the archetype of a smart, gentle, yet modest person and he fits that bill perfectly.

I can't wait to see more about him! We know such a small amount about him since his character story was intertwined w/ introducing Dragonspine and also more about him testing the Traveler--also we didn't get to play as him during it :<<

Xiao

He is a very gentle character who's been through so much and I admire his ambition and willingness and selflessness

I really like his attacks, too--the fluidity of his movements that ties in with his backstory and just his personality in general

I also want his outfit

There's just something about his character that is incredibly appealing--you see him at his worst with the Karmic Debt, the rawness of his personality due to his blunt way of speaking and the earnestness that he displays

Lots of quiet protection nodnod. You have to talk to one of the NPCs to find this out, but he helped a little girl get her doll back after it'd been taken by Hilichurls. He didn't have to do it because it's not something that people would consider important, but his duty extends beyond that. If he can help it, he will lend a hand

Also the interactions we have?? Like when he saves Traveler (the subtle shift of his grip on their hand, a little offer of stability) and then in Moonchase now?? *chef's kiss*

Xinyan

I LOVE HER

First off, she's a rockstar who's taken something and made it entirely her own?? Her guitar is of her own design too!! It's made to work with her pyro vision!!! Like how cool is that????

Her personality is strong, down to earth--ugh man she's so cool

I want to be friends with her so bad

She's absolutely strong-I personally built her as a phys dps so her shield doesn't really do much but man does she carry. If none of the boys can handle the job, I swap her in and she sweeps the field clean. Those mobs never stood a chance nodnod

Her aesthetic!! I also want her outfit. I want everyone's outfit.

While her en voice got a lot of questions/hate, I love it. I can't help but feel pumped up and ready when I use her skill and burst and she shouts out "Time to rock!!"

Her dedication to her music and unyielding determination to get her name out there is incredible, I can't help but admire her passion for music.

I just really love music, even if I'm trained more for classical + operatic ehe rock's actually my favorite genre so it's all the more better!

Xingqiu

Ah! The first time I saw him I immediately decided that I'd adopt him on the spot nodnod kinda like having a kid brother, y'know?? I think we'd get along well

Also the fact that he's a bookworm??? Again, I gravitate towards people who are considered smart--no matter what it's about! You could be incredibly knowledgeable about snails and only that and I will listen to you go on and on

He's a prankster! Poor Chongyun, being the butt of most of his jokes and all.

But like his character is really cute and I had a lot of fun listening to all his voicelines--there's a lot of funny stuff going on with him like his dislike for carrots, his handwriting-- but then he's also dedicated to his martial arts and helping others no matter the task! Very chivalrous indeed nodnod

A few of my other favorites are: Beidou, Kazuha, Scaramouche (it's a love hate)

Moving onnnn!!

I'll do roles first :DD

My favorite to play, hands down, are full on DPS and Support/DPS. Xiao, Kazuha, Albedo, Xinyan, Kaeya-- there's a lot but these are the peeps that I have, am currently, or would main.

I started off as a hybrid Kaeya main (some phys, some elemental), then Xiao's been my main DPS since!

Kazuha is incredible in tandem w/ Xiao because of his cc as well as his em buffs nodnod. Also Kazuha is just really fun to play in general.

Ngl, I think that getting and playing Xiao basically ruined all other characters for me because you can pry his attacks and burst plunging (very fun) out of my cold, dead hands (/j). The quickness of his attacks and playstyle--lots of poking w/ spear and then dodge + attack at the same time with his skill. 10/10 very fun, absolutely love.

As for support/DPS, this is more fun to do in co-op ehe. I usually end up playing Kazuha, Raiden (her skill gives all party members that passive extra electro dmg whenever you land a hit) or another elemental-based character--

That being said, elemental damage, when paired up to procc reactions is ugh sooo good.

Ships!!

I saved this for last because I know it's not everyone's cup of tea ehe. After all, I'm an x Reader blog!

But that being said--

I like the idea of XiaoVen, but I prefer KazuXiao because I feel like they'd work better together--this kinda goes over why. There'd be a lot of respect between the two.

Though, XiaoVen is really cute because they have complimenting personalities nodnod. Also froggie hat. And the idea of Venti being the one to play the flute that helped Xiao.

BeigGuang!!! Their dynamic is hilarious--not to mention that they do get along well but just so happen to butt heads often because their views are so wildly different-

YanTao! I feel that they'd be really cute together! Also Yanfei would probably make sure that Hu Tao stays out of trouble ehe...

XingYun! Very cute and wholesome--platonic or romantic, either way. The fact that they have matching friendship tassels?? Xingqiu seeking Chongyun out to read to him? OTL

I don't have any NOTPs, at least among the popular ships but I do get a little icky about AlbeRose because of some...unsavory experiences due to someone who overstepped. So ehe. We'll not talk about that.

But like Sucrose is really cute! I love her character and she's very sweet and the excitement that she shows with her research is something I relate to heavily! It's just--ahh the ship itself was ruined for me.

[genshinconfessions]

could you look at my showcase 👉👈

628827556

i'm proud of them lol

(PSA for everyone: if you'd like us to keep reviewing your builds, feel free to keep sending in your UID! for these, we will not friend you, we'll only be looking at your builds, so make sure you turn on detail visibility in your profile!

also if you want a specific admin to look at smth, make sure to indicate that too! edit: this is for ALL OF US because the other admins only check sporadically and i only load genshin at certain times of the day)

---

rosaria:

hmmm so i personally would not be using rosaria as phys dmg but i see that you are! in that regard, her overall stats look pretty good, but i'd say def try to get more crit rate.

i forget what rosaria's c2 does (c1 increases speed) but i'd say if you can't increase crit rate by constellation, definitely give her crit rate circlet.

also, up her talents! you're ar55 and rosaria is lvl 85! her normal attack talent should be at least 9 (since you're going phys dmg). i'm not sure if her other talents are good for phys, though, since they mostly do cryo dmg.

diluc:

so his artifacts look pretty good! other than the ones at lvl 0 HAHA. and again, i'd say that if you don't have crit dmg by ways of constellation/talents, definitely try to get ppl on a crit rate circlet.

but what you have right now is okay, i think. 47:130 is not exactly 1:2, but it's close enough that i don't think it should matter too much.

and again with the talents, up them! i'd prioritize diluc's burst unless you use him as phys dmg. i don't have diluc so i've never thought about this before lol.

sayu:

based on sayu's high atk and em, i'm going to guess you're using her as an em/healer (since her healing is based on atk). and in general i have no suggestions for this build! i think it looks really good for the most part.

(except the talent levels :( your talent levels are so lowww)

kazuha:

so it seems like you're using him as EM/sub dps, which i think is great. i don't really know how to use kazuha best so i can't comment on the artifacts, but your talents seem decently levelled so that's good.

i do think that you could consider giving him a weapon that doesn't have phys dmg as its substat? i feel like since you have such high EM, you can give him a weapon that focuses more on energy recharge/skill reset (unless you don't have those, which is totally valid).

razor:

i think you DEFINITELY should build razor more! i mean yo you have him c5!!! but also considering that i haven't built my razor yet, i'm not sure how to suggest things for you hahaha.

i would definitely suggest building him for phys dmg, though; everything about his skill/burst/constellations relate to phys dmg. so if you have snowtombed starsilver, i suggest putting him on that instead of prototype archaic! (is that the name?)

your artifacts are... okay, but not the best. i'd suggest getting him on pale flame for sure (for that phys dmg), and again, raising his crit rate!!

yanfei:

ah yes, someone i am currently building hAHAH.

so dodoco tales is great, but if you do have lost prayer, i'd ALWAYS suggest that over dodoco tales. for me, i have lost prayer r1 vs dodoco tales r5 (both at lvl 80, i think) and lost prayer works much better for me. but ofc that's if you have it, which you may not.

so for her artifacts, loving the full crimson witch set! but i'd prioritize pyro dmg goblet over atk goblet. catalysts ONLY do elemental dmg (unless you have a weapon that can do otherwise) and especially for a DPS like yanfei, i'd always suggest boosting the elemental dmg.

and i think keeping the 1:2 (crit rate:crit dmg) ratio is always a good way to go.

her talents look levelled okay! but for DPS yanfei, i'd say prioritize her normal attack since that's what you'll be using the most.

---

in general:

my friend, please move on from gladiator artifacts :sob: i mean i get you, i love glad and glad is great, but sometimes you just really gotta move on :(( there are better sets for your characters!

also i've noticed that you REALLY prioritize atk artifacts, and you always have a def artifact in there as well. i'm ofc not familiar with how you play, but i would get rid of the def artifacts and stop focusing so much on atk.

also, the crit rate:crit dmg ratio!!! i see you often have really nice crit dmg but not so good crit rate :( and it makes me sad because like, yanfei's only going to be doing great dmg 19% of the time and that's just not very reliable to me.

here is a really nice guide that i reference often, and ofc i don't follow it all exactly, but maybe it can help you too!

- katheryne from liyue

[zuluc]

I actually really really want to pull for Childe since I missed him the first time, but I also want to pull for Zhongli. I only have 7400 primogems 😭

the choice between the two of them is unfair 🤧 and idk if you need this but this may help your choice, otherwise take it with a grain of salt if not!

now, i don’t go off of tier lists as much as i go off of my “i think they look hot so i’m pulling” mindset but it doesn’t matter who you pull for as long as you enjoy the gameplay how you want to ☺️

this is based off of tier/meta ig:

pull for stinky fatui man if you don’t have a main dps since he’s pretty good as a burst (don’t mind if you don’t get constellations everyone is good if you make them good at c0!) or overall regular dps with his second skill. the downside is his cooldown which you can just switch out with another character in the meantime (or you can make him a phys damage dps and let him use his normal attacks). his atk is high but artifact pulls might be your worst nightmare so best of luck! (atk, crit chance and damage, elemental mastery, the works)

pull for old man geo if you are in need of some shielding or yet another dps! he’s good in overall support because of how strong his shield is and his ult damage percent is wow (leveling it up to 10 will get you 900% damage scaling off his atk and health). rock shields no longer need a claymore and mining is a dream 🤧 he’s fairly easy to build with health being the main priority and i can’t tell you how many times he’s saved me 😀. downside with zhongli, the prioritizations with his sets (either he can be support, support dps, or dps. it’s basically choosing if he can sustain or deal damage to work as best as he can, but then again this applies to any other character as well)

and this is just based off of them as characters:

chillday is kind of a dick but he has redeeming qualities. his voicelines consist of “let’s fight” or “don’t go dying on me because we have to fight” 😔. his idle animations and design fit him so well and he’s a pretty boy ngl

geo daddy has everything but mora. the looks, the voice, the power, the VOICE. and hey, he’s an archon AND kicks his spear while attacking. i could listen to him talk all day

i wish you the best of luck and i hope you can pull the both them with the primos you have (and will be receiving!)

[semi-imaginary-place]

octopath traveler: what subjobs ive been using

cyrus: i’ve just been using whatever gives him the biggest elemental attack boost so he was dancer for a while until I got sorcerer. i considered starseer for better coverage and went naaaahhhh i want big numbers, so now he’s permanently sorcerer. occasionally was cleric if i didn’t have a healer in the party. It is only much further into the future that I realize rune blade is good for him too. If alfyn is on the team to give him bp every turn then he can destroy single targets with like 60k per turn.

h’aanit: her elem atk isn’t good so i went full physical and put her as warrior for a bit of bulk and more physical attack. and then warmaster for more phys atk. she makes an excellent thief too with recovery options and her dagger attacks are really strong. Max bp warmaster skill h'aanit with a bp bot and all her extra turns per round is a goddess of destruction.

tressa: a true all rounder she’s been really whatever job i need to fill in holes. scholar if cyrus isn’t in the party and i need elemental coverage, thief if therion isn’t in the party, apothecary if i needed backup healing. but she’s really really good as runeblade. like slap on a rune and a couple passives and she’s doing like 10-50k a round. She is also the only one to get 2 wind boost items.

alfyn: alfyn’s been my tank lol. since h’aanit was usually in the party with warrior alfyn for skills and equipment. he spent a good chunk of time as merchant for sp recovery. he was briefly cleric and warrior. he also makes a good runeblade but right now he’s starseer since all the other hidden jobs are taken. it's mostly for elemental coverage and the bp attack skill since alfyn can give a total of 8bp per turn. his damage is probably the worst of my normal party but he utility is so goddamn high. Late game and final boss alfyn was the linchpin of my strategy, he rarely did significant damage but he healed, buffed, broke and enabled everyone to use max bp skills. Another route i didnt take would have been to maximize last stand.

therion: hunter is really good for therion since it boosts his already high speed, crit, and evasion. like no joke therion has the highest survivability of any character i have just because he doesn’t get hit. like usually when i party wipe therion is the last one to go down. if tressa isn’t in the party he also spends a lot of time as merchant so the snatch skill can do double duty for steal and collect.

ophelia: cleric meshes well with other buffing classes like dancer and starseer. she spent most of the time as dancer and occasionally was scholar when another wasn’t in the party. i generally use alfyn as my main healer so ophelia wasn’t in the party a lot

primrose: was usually scholar if cyrus wasn’t in the party. her elemental skills ended up doing more damage than her physical ones. but i didn’t use primrose all that much.

olberic: actually spent quite a while a thief. i pretty much always want one person with thief and one person with scholar for utility purposes (and im an item collector.... how else am i going to get red apples?) soooo that often ended up being olberic. the dagger abilities were really strong with him too and it gave him recovery options. apothecary was the other job usually on him as with a healing ability he’s unstoppable in solo fights. the one man army lol.

[ridiasfangirlings]

Post ROK and Eveybody lives! AU. Mikoto and Yata decided to take Munakata and Fushimi to gym. Afterall, their power greatly reduced because their aura gradually disappear.

Homra trying to get their nerdy boyfriends into shape XD Imagine them going to some super meathead type gym too, everywhere it's bodybuilder types or rough fighter guys and then here's delicate Fushimi and regal dork Munakata just standing around. So post-series Everybody Lives AU, everyone's powers have started really fading in earnest now and they're only just like a couple steps above normal humans Unfortunately however Strains are still fairly strong and this has become a problem for Scepter 4 especially, since not all of their people are quite in as good a shape as others. Fushimi's probably suffering the most for it, of everyone I can see him having the lowest natural endurance and whenever he and Yata are out hunting down Strains and working together Yata notices right away that Fushimi's not as quick as he used to be and that he runs out of breath very easily. Yata's pretty concerned about this, especially since Fushimi still tends to go on missions by himself a lot, but Fushimi blows it off and says he's fine, Scepter 4 has a dojo anyway. Yata knows from talking to the S4 alphabet squad that Fushimi rarely goes to training though and so he decides that okay you know what we're going to the gym, I'm gonna get you into shape.

Somehow Munakata ends up finding out about this, maybe he's meeting Mikoto for a drink in the bar when Fushimi and Yata walk in still arguing about the gym. Munakata wonders what the problem is and Yata's like tell your idiot subordinate to come to the gym with me. This intrigues Munakata, wondering why Fushimi-kun would need to go to the gym and Yata's like he needs to build some muscle, look at him. Munakata seems amused by this and Mikoto notes that he's pretty skinny too, like clansman like King. Munakata disagrees that he needs more exercise and Mikoto says Munakata's been out of breath when they spar lately too and he's no fun, he should exercise more. Munakata's definitely not letting himself be lectured by Suoh of all people so he declares that he and Fushimi will be meeting Mikoto and Yata at the gym tomorrow.

So the next day they get to the gym and Munakata is probably wearing like the absolute most embarrassing gym outfit possible, like he probably has on a sweat band and leg warmers in bright colors and he looks like he stepped out of the Let's Get Physical music video. Fushimi by contrast is just wearing baggy clothes and trying to look like he doesn't know this strange sparkling man in front of him, they are not acquainted. Yata and Mikoto arrive and Yata's immediately over by Fushimi like does your King always dress like that on his day off wtf. Mikoto snorts and says Munakata's all ready to exercise huh, Munakata adjusts his glasses and states he is ready for some exertion. Yata and Mikoto lead Fushimi and Munakata inside and everyone's probably staring at them, Munakata of course looks totally out of place and Fushimi's looking at all the exercise equipment and physical exertion like he just wants to die right there on the spot.

After this the two groups separate out to train their respective Blues, Yata drags Fushimi away from the exercise machines and probably tries to get him to play some sports like they did when they were kids. Of course when they were kids Fushimi tried to get out of phys ed as much as possible anyway so this doesn't work much better, Yata's all energetic and ready to show off his skills to Fushimi and Fushimi keeps staring at him with dead fish eyes and pulling out his PDA. At some point maybe Yata does manage to goad him into like a game of ping pong or something and the two of them end up having this whole way too serious match full of yelling and trash talking as they each try to win the game and it's actually pretty fun. Elsewhere Munakata is observing all the beefcake guys lifting weights, Mikoto smirks and wonders if Munakata wants to give it a try and just imagine Munakata ending up bench pressing a ton of weight because turns out King powers aren't quite as diminished as they thought (actually just imagine Munakata in general walking around the gym trying to make friendly small talk with all the guys exercising, getting way too close in their personal space and Mikoto keeps having to pull him away while everyone wonders just what is up with that weird nerd in the neon blue spandex exercise outfit).

[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.

[serenewrites]

Tips on Character Development

(AKA the convoluted way I do things)

Ok, so, wow. This ended up being like super ridiculously long. Sorry about that. I just got done adding "a thing or two" and it ended up being longer than what I originally wrote.

So, a while ago I responded to a post on Reddit asking for help developing a character. My comment seemed to help a few people, so I figured I'd add a thing or two and post it for anyone else who may find it helpful!

TL;DR: I think Personality tests —Myers Briggs and Enneagram — used in tandem make a pretty complete, rounded character. Add in some Pinterest Character Inspiration boards to that and you've got some preeettyyy developed characters. Also, OneNote rocks my world.

If you wanna read my entire process, keep reading. If not, just read the first few paragraphs and you'll get the idea. If you don’t care, ignore me and scroll on, friend.

The Personality Tests

When I started getting my MCs together, I took a Myers Briggs personality test for each of them! 16 Personalities is a really great resource because you just answer how your character would and it gives you so much information on what type of person they'd be. If you go to that second link, it goes deeper into their theory and what each aspect of the test results actually mean. If you're looking for that, scroll down to the Five Personality Aspects part of the second link. I think the entire thing is neat, so I recommend the read. Anyways, I've done this for my protagonists, as well as my main BBEGs, and some minor characters that I was kind of struggling with.

From there, I also looked up what Enneagram types they'd line up with according to their Myers Briggs type. That site talks a lot about what the Enneagram personality stuff is all about. It's worth a read. The whole concept is pretty neat. Your personality type is similar to the personality types that are near you, but also reflects to the types across from you. Or something... I'm explaining this poorly, I know haha.

There are a few ways I went about relating the two personality tests. I didn't want to take two different tests. I really like the Myers Briggs because it's all about decisions, but I like that the Enneagram talks a lot about how they interact with each other and the world. It kind of gave me a more rounded vision of who they are. Instead of taking two tests, I used this site to find a correlation between the Myers Briggs type and the Enneagram type.

There are 9 Enneagram types. Russell Rowe (not Crowe, I know, I thought it too) does an AWESOME job of breaking them down... into 15-20 page PDFs.

Enneagram Type 1

Enneagram Type 2

Enneagram Type 3

Enneagram Type 4

Enneagram Type 5

Enneagram Type 6

Enneagram Type 7

Enneagram Type 8

Enneagram Type 9

You can easily find any of those by Googling "Enneagram Type x Russell Rowe" and it'll pop up as literally the first thing. But I linked each of them to the above list. I have each of those PDFs saved into my OneNote folder for each major character, good or evil. I highlighted things that really stuck out to me for each character.

After reading through all those, I was able to figure out if that was truly who I wanted my character to be. Is that personality type and Enneagram type truly who I envisioned my character? If yes, move forward. If not, retake the tests. I retook my one MC's Myers Briggs test 3 times, I think, and once I rounded it out with the Enneagram type, I really got her how I wanted her, so don't get discouraged if you read the results and don't feel like it fits your characters!

This is the point where I kind of venture off into more of how I do things, so I won't feel bad if you don't want to read my word vomit from here on out. I kind of just talk about the benefits of questionnaires vs the personality test method, how I use OneNote to keep track of my character development, and visual inspiration using Pinterest.

If you decide to keep reading, thanks! Also, buckle up, because it's a lot...

Personality Tests vs Character Questionnaires

So, I use Scrivener, but I also have used Bibisco (free!) in the past. Bibisco has a really, really detailed questionnaire that asks questions I hadn't even thought about. How does this character eat? What are they usually dressed like? What's their favorite type of music? Are they a pessimist or an optimist? A realist? Are they book smart or street smart? There's like... literally HUNDREDS of questions on there. It also asks about family members, relationships, sexuality (I think, but it's worth adding), past events that occurred before the book.

While I am a perfectionist, I started with the Bibisco stuff and then ended up falling off the wagon with it because it took so excruciatingly long to complete one for each character. I already had a pretty good idea of how each of them would act and I didn't really want to put myself in a box creatively. Sometimes my characters just grow organically as I write and I make discoveries about them that way!

The Bibisco questions, and questionnaires overall, are so helpful, but again, they can be so so time consuming. If you have the time (and that's your jam) I totes recommend it. Bibisco so in-depth and has so many questions that I honestly hadn't even thought about. But I have 4 main characters, and 2 major minor characters, and 1 BBEG in my first book alone. I just could not handle like hundreds of questions per person. And tbh, the Myers Briggs and Enneagram was enough for me!

All of that to say, the way Bibisco breaks down their information and some questions it asks are really cool and helpful. While I don't answer each question it has, I do like to think of just in general, how does Kein act? How does she carry herself, talk, laugh, cry? Does she belly laugh or is it more of a quiet giggle. When she cries, does she try to hide it and push everyone away (spoiler alert, yes), or does she cry openly and ask for help?

OneNote is your super organized best friend forever

I compile all of this information into OneNote, which... is honestly a post in and of itself (something I would be more than happy to do if people were interested). OneNote is just the most amazing way to keep track of everything in my world (venturing past char dev here, for a tiny second).

I first discovered how useful it was when I started my homebrew campaign for dnd and it has been so invaluable ever since. Especially for the worldbuilding I am currently doing for my fictional world. I'm also pretty sure anyone who has Windows and the Microsoft Office Suite, has it for free. So if you do have Microsoft Office, I HIGHLY recommend checking out OneNote for book/character organization.

In OneNote, I have different collections set up for worldbuilding, chapter notes, a to-do list, a timeline, and most importantly (or relevantly) for characters. I have a section for the protagonists, the villains, the good guys, bad guys, and then misc neutral people. Though, usually, people in my book fall into the good or bad sections. I have neutral people for things that have happened historically, but that's neither here nor there.

Within each section, say, the Heroes, I have a "page" for each of my main characters. Their title page is just a bunch of random notes that I hastily added on the go, but the subpages are where it's at. Each subpage is based off the Bibisco (see above) sections. Personal Data, Physical Features, Behaviors/Attitude, Psych, Ideas/Passions, Interpersonal, Life Before the Story, Conflict, Evolution, and Visual Inspiration.

The psych section of Bibisco is a very in depth 64 questions on their psychological profile. In my OneNote, this is more or less where I put my personality test results and I highlight important information. Instead of answering 64 questions that answer whether or not Kein is outgoing or shy, the personality profiles answer those for you, quite easily.

For example, Kein tested as ISTP-T. She is an Introvert, Observant, Thinking, Prospecting, and Turbulent. Even just looking at that last sentence, it tells me more about my character than any 64 questions about how hardworking, free-spirited, or vain (all Bibisco questions) she is.

I really like how Bibisco broke down the information, but how it goes about char dev doesn't work for me personally. So I modified it to work for me! Instead of answering all those questions, I read through the questions and the personality profiles I have in the Psych section. In the other sections, I just type a blurb or two about how Kein behaves, her passions, and her interpersonal skills (or lack thereof). Instead of reading through a numbered list of questions and answers, I can just read the blurb or highlighted sections in the personality section and be reminded of her overall personality instead of how she acts in one rigid sense.

I think that's why I like the personality tests the most— they give you a more generalized sense of your character instead of how they act in a linear or flat scenario. How do they walk, for instance, is one of the questions, but that really hinges on a lot, right? What's the scenario?

Is Kein coming home from a successful scavenging mission, standing tall and proud, but letting someone else take the spotlight of success? (Introvert vs Extrovert). Or is she folding into herself, thinking about all the things she could have done differently, while she’s being scolded? (Thinking vs Feeling).

How a character, walks, talks, laughs, and generally holds themselves really depends on... you guessed it! Their personalities! Which is why I really like the personality test route.

One extra bit, OneNote lets you do 3 tiers of folders, so I can have Kein>Physical Features and then one more set of subpages under Physical Features. I find this useful for character development that happens over the course of your writing. For example, my MCs fight a pack of wolves at one point (this first book of mine is very Man v Nature). They all walk away with injuries. Under my Physical Features page, I have a subpage for Developments. I either just have notes there, or a table set up by chapter. It'll say, Ch# in the left column, and then it'll have a set of bullet points for things that changed in that chapter.

Ch# - Kein attacked by a wolf - sustained a bite to shoulder and claw slash across her stomach. (A note: for wounds, I'll sometimes add pics, but as long as you can visualize it, it's whatevs).

It goes for other aspects of character development too though! If a romance is blossoming, I'll add notes chapter by chapter using the table system I noted above. If an injury causes someone to move/walk differently I make a note of it. Especially for injuries that I need to remember like, ok, she has fractured ribs. She ain't climbing that cliff side— they're going to have to find a different way or they're going to have to figure out how to get her up it.

Side note for the injury and time keeping — I made an entire post about how I do this, so check that out if you’re interested.

A small bit on visual inspiration

When coming up with a visual of my characters, I turn to Pinterest. Pinterest is the bee's knees for visual character inspiration. If you have a general idea of what you want your character to look like, just search "character inspiration" and then adding any descriptors. Sometimes I don't find what I'm looking for, so instead I'll search "model" and then the descriptors. My MC has red hair and freckles. I searched "character inspiration red hair female" and "model freckles female" and tons of pics popped up.

I created a board named "Character Inspo_NAME" on Pinterest for each main character. A nice spring board for visualizing my characters. It ranges from boots and ripped jeans, to faces of models/people, hairstyles and accessories.

I mass pin things and then I comb through and look for stuff that really resonates with a character— a few pics of models, some outfits, particular accessories or items, shoes, clothes, hair styles!! With those few, more narrowed down pics, I place them into my Visual Inspiration folder in OneNote. I can reference it if I need to remember what someone is wearing or what a particular item someone has looks like. Or just in general if I need a bit of a boost, it helps to write a character's description if I'm looking at the character inspiration.

I’m certainly not, like, the best person to go to for visual inspo stuff. There are so many other people out there who do these amazing aesthetic and mood boards and all kinds’a stuff like that and it’s so so so amazing. So, don’t take my word for it in this area, because I’m certainly not the authority here. I’m just givin yinz an idea of how I do things.

I hope this helps! Maybe I should have added memes or something.

Anyways, that’s all folks. Good luck! Feel free to ask me any questions if you have them! Also, I'd love to hear comments on my process, or how anyone else does their character development!

i also feel like this entire post is a mess so thanks for reading if you made it to the end. also let me know if any links don’t work or anything like that.

[artfvllly]

                                     ❝ wait, are we friends now? ❞

axel? pick up a female character? actually less likely than you think !!! but i....relate to webby on a spiritual level, so here we go !!

webby’s spent most of her life cooped up in the mcduck mansion, with just her granny and scrooge for company until donald and the triplets came along. huey, dewey and louie are the first kids her own age that she’s ever known (until she showed up in walton creek, anyway)

her granny taught her just about everything she knows. it isn’t much of a book-education, but it is practical. survival skills, martial arts,half a dozen or so languages — things she knew webby would really enjoy learning about.

what her granny didn’t teach her, webby went ahead and taught herself. scrooge had a ton of books in the mansion, plus a decent internet connection. most of her independent study has focused on the mcduck family itself. she’s basically a walking encyclopedia. it’s kind of creepy, actually.

as it turns out, real school is boring. it was something of a novelty for about a week, but now she’s over it. anything that she doesn’t already know is pretty much useless as far as she’s concerned. the only classes she consistently both attends and plays attention in are science and phys ed.

everything about walton creek fascinates her. even the mundane, normal stuff. or maybe especially the normal and mundane stuff, but only because she doesn’t understand it and she really wants to.

she’s also fascinated by how and why she’s here, obviously. getting home isn’t a priority, though. at least not until she figures out everything. if anything, she’s likely to sabotage discourage any serious efforts to get everyone home

she’s is seriously smart and good at problem solving, just when it comes to normal people stuff. homegirl is good enough to translate some weird, random runes, but work a vending machine? nope. she just has this tendency to assume that everything is more complicated than it actually is.

when shit goes down, you bet she’ll be there to help take down the bad guys

the nephews !! and granny !! and scrooge !! and the whole rest of the squad !!! she wants to find them so bad.

call her webbigail and she might fight you? unless you’re scrooge, he’s the exception.

the chance to make new friends is exciting !!! too bad she has no idea how to make friends. her tactic is to just sort of glom onto people and refuse to let go. i apologize in advance.

honestly, she’s just the biggest sweetheart. she means well. someone pls befriend my daughter

and now for some edited stuff lifted from the wiki:

personality: sweet, capable, well-behaved, dreamy, kind, caring, zealous, socially-awkward, talkative, adventurous, nice, warm

likes: animals, people being nice, going on adventures and spending time with her uncle scrooge

dislikes: being neglected, cruelty, the nephews being mean