#would have their banner rerun during the second patch

[rubywolf0201]

Hoyoverse: *reveals Huohuo’s banner rerun alongside Jiaoqiu’s banner*

Me, with very limited Stellar Jades:

[tjemegames]

HSR: e0s1 Boothill Warps

Disclaimer: I am no longer e0s1; I’m now on my e2s1 cowboy shenanigans 🤠 Details under the cut!

Another pulling session has come and gone. What kind of assimilated southerner would I be if I didn't pull for the one and only interstellar cowboy?

42 days worth of saving and 130 warps later he has joined my roster. Welcome aboard, Boothill! Glad to finally have you.

An overview of what I got today:

4 x Pela (already e6)

1 x Under the Blue Sky (s7)

1 x Hook (e6)

1 x Concert for Two (s2)

1 x The Birth of Self (s6)

1 x Boothill (new, 79 pity)

6 x A Secret Vow (s9)

1 x In the Name of the World (s2, 16 pity)

2 x Arlan (e5)

2 x Geniuses' Repose (s3)

1 x Landau's Choice (s3)

1 x Sailing Towards a Second Life (new, 67 pity)

Total = nineteen 4*s & three 5*s

I was a bit nervous when I started this session, ngl. Aventurine's pulls went too well for my usual brand of luck so I was worried that I might end up going through a majority of my warp/jade savings this time around. Thankfully, Boothill was merciful and I still have 135 warps leftover to put toward Jade next patch.

Well, fork me! Make that e1s1 Boothill!

This was not in the original plans but, after a short deliberation, I said, “fuck it we ball!” Lo and behold, Boothill came back through. I might go for e2 during one of his reruns sometime in the future. We’ll just have to see how everything pans out.

Here’s what another 80 warps got me:

3 x Luka (e4)

1 x Trend of the Universal Market (s5)

1 x Hook (already e6)

1 x Under the Blue Sky (s8)

1 x Pela (already e6)

1 x Planetary Rendezvous (s4)

1 x Boothill (e1, 78 pity)

1 x Concert for Two (s3)

Total = nine 4*s & one 5*

Honestly, losing 50/50 wouldn't have been bad either because it would've only guaranteed my Jade next patch. Happy nonetheless, and l've still got 70 tickets left in my funds. Now I'm really going back to saving.

I am now part of the e2s1 Cowboy Nation!

How many cowboy eidolons is too many cowboy eidolons?? (I’m asking for myself because literally what am I doing?) Did I need them? No. But this is where I’m at now.

What can I say, really? The Big Depression hit me hard and my usually well-restrained gambling demons took over for a short while. I was sure that I would lose my 50/50 this time but that was not the case. The gacha was on my side yet again (can it sense my southerness?) by yielding yet another copy of my dearest gunslinger. Happy as hell to have him so I shan’t complain about getting lucky. Pray for future me because they’ll surely be going through it on the next desired character banner.

Here’s what my final 80 warps got me:

6 x Hook (already e6)

1 x Yukong (e6)

1 x Only Silence Remains (s2)

1 x Pela (already e6)

1 x Under the Blue Sky (s9)

1 x Boothill (e2, 75 pity)

1 x Luka (e5)

Total = eleven 4*s & one 5*

That’s all from me. I’m officially (for real, for real this time) done pulling for this cyborg for the rest of eternity. 290 total warps to secure e2s1. It was not in my original plans, but I resonate with him so I went for it. Not too shabby overall.

Good luck all Boothill wanters -- may the gacha gods be with you!

[kyogre-blue]

Writing this out for myself. 

Tomorrow, I will finally get Yaoyao. I’ll need to grind her cube drops for the next few days (it needs Dendro, so I’m waiting for her to do it), but I’m only taking her to 80/80 for now, so it should be possible to finish that using next week’s battle pass mission for 10 bosses. With the event rewards, I should also have enough books to take her talents to 2/8/8. She’ll be working on Keqing Aggravate, hopefully. 

Then for the rest of the week, I’ll do exp book leyline, since I’m going to be dipping into my Mika books for Yaoyao, and I also have a bunch of other characters I want to take 70 > 80 later. 

For the rest of the patch, I need to focus on grinding for Mika and the 3.5 event claymore. Mika needs 27 more wenut drops and a lot of ballad books. (Bonus: I’m probably going to get enough Anemo drops to max ascend Heizou, my last sub-80/90 Anemo, from all this.) I’m going to hold off on the books until the end of patch overflow event, since Mond book domains is...... eh. It needs a different team than what I use for normal dailies and grinding, so it’s a hassle. I should be able to grind out everything he needs in one week if I focus on it specifically, and the 3.5 events will also help fill out anything I’m missing. 

The claymore needs more consecrated beast shells, chains, and weapon ore. The chains aren’t too big a deal, I’ll probably do them on Sundays over the patch, and I should hopefully be able to get the shells during exploration and with the scorpion at Yashiori + bird close to Old Varanara. 

For artifacts, Yaoyao should be okay with a 4pc Tenacity I’ll half take from Dori and half originally intended for Kuki non-Bloom set. Some of her specific pieces will depend on how she performs though, especially her healing and energy needs. I don’t plan to have her burst every rotation with Keqing, so it should be easier to manage. 

For Mika, he’ll use Candace’s Noblesse, though I need to check if any of the pieces need to be switched. He’ll be taking Zhongli’s Fav Lance, so he’ll need more crit than Candace has. 

Yaoyao will use either Kitain or Moonpiercer. Moonpiercer isn’t levelled, but her personal damage is going to be negligible right now either way, so it’s just for the atk buff effect. 

I need to level some more stuff, but I’ll just... put artifacts on hold for a while. It’s too depressing. 

For pulling, this patch is a skip, which is boring, but I’m at 65 rolls on both character and weapon, haha.... It’s too risky to roll even once more. I’ll have enough for Eula for sure, at least, though it’ll be tough getting Mika. Might need to risk C1 Eula... I’m pretty sure they’ll be on the same banner, at least, though we don’t know which half or who will run with them. My guess would be Dehya on first half and Eula on second half, I don’t think they’ll be together. The leaks also suggest Cyno will be rerunning, but the last open slot is being heavily contested between Shenhe and various other Mond characters. It’s fine as long as it’s not Klee, which would be really hard for me to swing. 

If I had to choose which C1 to risk... man, it’s hard to say, they’re all bad to pointless. Venti’s is useless, and while his C2 shreds Anemo, it’s not like... super useful in the taser and occasional freeze teams I use him on. Albedo’s C1 is useless, and his C2 theoretically adds DEF scaling to his burst, which is nice, but it’s pretty limited. Eula C1 is the most generically useable, since it increases her Phys DMG after hold skill following a tap skill (so, right before her burst). I’ve heard it’s not particularly powerful, but at least it’s something. 

I do need the starglitter from pulls though, since I want to buy Amber and Razor in April (68 starglitter total), Lisa in May (34 starglitter), and Kaeya in June (34 starglitter). Lisa is the most skippable purchase, but it’s still 102 starglitter, when we only get 2 every ten pulls or so. At this point, it’s almost useful to get C6′d 4 stars, since that’s a whole 5 starglitter. 

Jokes aside, the 4 stars longest without rerun are Fischl (9), Diona (9), Sucrose (8), Chongyun (12), Kuki (7), Collei (9), Dori (8), Candace (7). I have Fischl and Diona at C6, but Chongyun is C5, Sucrose is C3, and the rest are even lower. Given that I do want the starglitter, I don’t have any super strong preferences on the rate up 4 stars, though Kuki or Sucrose cons would be the nicest, and I guess I did want Candace cons too. 

Post 3.5, it’ll be Baizhu and maaaybe Kaveh. I want to get some Dendro man, but I’m waiting to see what their kits are. Kaveh might be a 4 star, it’s hard to say. I’m really hoping Baizhu is something that doesn’t care for Nahida, though a healer would be really nice. The other thing I’m considering is getting Nilou, as long as one of the Dendro men can run in her team instead of Nahida. But since Cyno is (probably) rerunning, Nilou might be in 3.6 with the theorized Baizhu launch and Nahida rerun. Which... would be really hard to manage.

(I also considered planning for Ayaka, since her costume solves basically all my issues with her design, but I ultimately decided against it, just because there’s already so much I want. Freeze team would be nice, but it’s not priority enough, compared to other stuff.) 

But this is getting into really unsubstantiated speculation, so it’ll likely get changed a lot once we’re in 3.5 and the 3.6 beta. 

[femmesandhoney]

has c6 furina manifested yet? good luck!!

no haha c6 would have been a freaking miracle, but i got an early at 50 pity for my guaranteed one, and lost to Mona on the second going for c2. i'm like 65 ish into pity now, so i think i'll be able to swing her c2 before the banner ends for sure <3 that will be enough for me until i'm able to fully save up for her. the only reason i couldn't c6 her right away this time around was because i dropped 400+ on Lyney and his weapon during his rerun a few patches ago, which bled me very dry. worth it tho. but my sights are for sure on c6 Furina now i promise lol

[prosaic-bun]

Patch 2.8 Divination session

*Based on leaks - possible spoilers*

This is an early guess of what could possibly happen event and story wise. What is anticipated and general foreboding: A lot of talks about a new Mondstadt region being released (DLC); Event rerun for Windblume festival; Mentions of a rerun of the Golden Apple Archipelago(GAA) ; Full double reruns for both banners - for a total of 4 characters getting a rerun; The current agreed upon line up would be something like: Kazuha and Klee with either Childe, Hu tao, Eula or Albedo; Heizou's release (4 stars); Last patch before 3.0 and Sumeru.

Event I actually believe we aren't going to have a Windblume festival rerun, but instead get Ludi Harpastum. Last time this festival was canonically celebrated was during Colleis' arc in the official Genshin Manga. Revisiting the event in game might allow us to get lore and information on Sumeru and pre-introduce some characters. It would be an opportune moment to release new Mondstadt skins.

New region? Some sources mentioned we could see the release of the Dornman Port area in the northen region of Mondstadt, or the rerun of the GAA. Once again I'll go against the grain and speculate we won't have a brand new region, but small additions to the current Mondstadt map.

Reasoning: Genshin tried to achieve the pacing of one new region per patch, so it would make sense they would try to give something new in 2.8 (a rerun of the GAA would replicate the patch 2.5 with the Three Realms Gateway Offering). However I feel it would be difficult for genshin team to achieve such a feat right before the release of the Sumeru region and right after completing the Chasm second map.

Narrowing it down: I can currently think of 3 Mondstadt subareas that could be minimally expanded to give us some exploration crumbs: Stormterror's lair/Old Mondstadt - The eerie 'canyon' with a tree and a cave that leads nowhere (yet) or the Decarabian's tower treated in game as an 'out of bounds location'. Dawn Winery - the basement of the winery and the speculated network of tunnels; The Thousand Winds Temple - Closed gates and NPCs.

Verdict: In my opinion it would make sense we get to explore the Thousand Winds Temple since Istaroth as been quite relevent in the story lately. I also talked about my 'portals theory' in a previous post and how the seelie from the GAA brought us back to Mondstadt - there specifically. The many doorways present around the amphitheater always seemed sus to me.

Patchi the Curious and Doolan can be seen on site trying to find a way to enter the ruins. Doolan tries to stall the researcher because he loves her or something and Patchi the Curious only wants to get around the ruin gard and enter, we love an asexual-aromantic icone. Furthermore, one of the temple gate was opened during the Windblume festival event (some shenanigans about Benny boy and Razor), meaning it's feasible.

Bing able to go into the temple and explore it would also follow the Teyvat trend of finding other civilisation ruins under the current regions. Especially in Inazuma, every islands seem to have something underground including Enkanomiya. For 2.6 we have the Chasm in Liyue. Sal Vindagnyr also fit the 'burried civilisation trope' but I feel like the mountain is more hollow than underground.

Goofiest connection: When you talk with Patchi the Curious you get a dialogue option where she gives you the volume 1 of The Mondstadt Tower, adding it into the archive. The book tells a short story set during Ludi Harpastum - by the looks of it the plot seems to be a copy and paste of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Entre nous, that just confirms my theory.

[murasaki-murasame]

I might not have gotten my pipe dream wishes granted, but the Dragalia Digest was still a very pleasant surprise overall, and I have a lot of thoughts on it now, lol

TL;DR: *Joe and Xania voice* mom said it’s our time to be meta flame units :)

I still want a Switch port for this game eventually, but I can’t complain about not getting one when basically everything else about the Digest was good, lol.

It ended up feeling a bit more . . . conservative with some of the announcements they made, but that might be for the best since the game’s in a bit of a precarious state. So playing it safe is probably a good idea.

I was a bit worried that they might announce more aggressive monetization schemes, but the New Years packs and stuff seem pretty much in line with how these things have been done up till now, and basically nothing else about the shop has been changed aside from the UI stuff.

The Agito fights and the 6-star weapons were my biggest concern going into this since it could make or break people’s patience with the game, but it seems on paper like it hits a good middle ground. The requirements to access the Agito fights seem relatively low, and the 6-star weapons seem to be be around the level of a HDT1, so I think that hits a good balance of being strong but not powercreep-y in a way that puts off people who’ve been grinding for HDT2 weapons. The fact that they announced in advance that higher difficulties for the Agito fights and higher tiers of the 6-star weapons will be added later makes me think that they’re trying to roll out this stuff much more slowly than the HDT stuff in order to control the powercreep more and not overwhelm people, which is a good idea. I imagine that Expert or Master Agito fights will probably expect you to have something like a HDT2 weapon, but by the time those fights get released it probably won’t be a big deal.

The Mana Spiral upgrades also seem way more potent than I was expecting, across the board. I can’t access the main website at the moment so I don’t have a full picture of what the buffs are like, but from what I’ve been reading they all sound like pretty huge buffs that will go a long way toward making more units more meta, or at least more accepted, in end-game content.

For one thing, the Mana Spirals are gonna let us level up a unit to level 100, which is a nice surprise. It seems like that alone gives units a pretty big upgrade to their HP and strength, which should make it way easier to meet certain thresholds.

It also looks like basically every single skill and ability of each unit is getting a new upgrade level, which is way more than I was expecting. I figured that only the second skill and one of the abilities of each unit would get an upgrade, but this is a way bigger buff than I thought. They even buffed stuff like skill prep/status resistance 100% abilities by adding new effects to them, which is great.

It looks like Ezelith and Naveed are going to be way stronger in general across the board, which I appreciate, but I’m more hyped for the 3-star Mana Spiral upgrades, since those seem like a really big deal. It sounds like basically every flame unit that got a Mana Spiral upgrade here can now inflict burn with basically any attacking skills they have, which seems like a really big deal. If Mikoto in particular can get an upgrade like that later, I have a feeling that Rena might fall out of favour in HMS due to there being way more options for burn enablers who don’t have to worry as much about stuff like getting stunned. In general the idea of Xania being able to inflict burn with both of her skills is kinda crazy, lol. It makes me relieved that I went ahead and got her to 50MC a while ago. I think she might actually be better than S-Maribelle with these upgrades [until she gets buffed too], but I really want to get more info on how her kit changes with these buffs. Sadly Marty doesn’t seem to be getting buffed yet since he wasn’t a launch unit, but hopefully everyone will get Mana Spirals in the long run.

It’s also exciting that they’re giving these upgrades to random 4-star units as well. It gives me hope that Thaniel will get buffed later on so that he’s closer to if not better than Jiang Ziya.

They also decided to give Botan and Cassandra buffs in this initial batch which is kinda funny to me. Botan at least makes sense since the event with her is getting rerun really soon so it’s a good time to buff her, but Cassandra getting buffed right out the door is so obviously them going ‘we’re sorry about the whole Gleo thing’, lol. They also apparently nerfed HJP in a way that makes bleed and poison way better against him, and I think they added poison to Cassandra’s kit, so it really feels like they’re trying to address the issues with HJP. Which I appreciate. And I think that this is probably the best way to handle it, since this makes it way more viable to have different types of team comps there than just four Gleos.

It’ll be interesting to see if we start getting characters soon who have their Mana Spiral upgrades built into their kits right away, while older units get theirs slowly patched in. I guess we’ll see what happens with the new zodiac units.

And on that note we’ve got at least some info about the new zodiac event/banner, and it all looks pretty neat. I was wondering how they’re gonna handle it, but it looks like they’re gonna do a really short rerun of the Ieyasu event to bridge Christmas and New Years before getting into a new raid event for the new zodiac units. Which seems like a pretty great way to handle it. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they do this every year from now on, especially if each new zodiac event story builds upon the stuff from the Ieyasu event story.

On top of it just being a relief that this isn’t JUST gonna be rerun central yet again, I’m really happy that the new units are gonna be [mostly] light-element, lol. That was my main wish for them, honestly. My light roster just feels really weak so I want more good ones, but I don’t want to bother chasing after DY-Malora. It’s kinda surprising that it looks like the main 5-star banner unit is gonna be a 5-star light dagger, while the 4-stars are a blade and a wand. I guess this makes it a bit less likely that Gala Luca will be a light dagger, so maybe he’ll be a light blade or something instead. With how . . . iffy daggers are as a weapon type, the new main 5-star unit doesn’t really seem like they interest me much, and Nobunaga being a 5-star flame blade is kinda annoying and unoriginal in general, but I’ll probably still summon on the banner. Hanabusa and Chitose at least look neat. One of them will probably be the welfare unit, but I hope that the introduction of Mana Spiral upgrades means that event welfare units won’t be held back by bad kits anymore. Botan’s getting some pretty big upgrades, so I hope the new welfare unit follows suit.

I was gonna complain a bit about this banner mostly being female characters, but the more I think about it the more I could see either Chitose or Mitsuhide being a boy, so I’m gonna just wait and see how it goes, lol.

It looks like the banner during the Ieyasu rerun is gonna just be a rate-up banner for the units getting Mana Spiral upgrades, and the new zodiac banner seems to have two 5-star adventurers on it [plus the dragon], so it’s looking like they might not be bringing Ieyasu back. Or if they do he might just not be on rate-up like what happens with gala units. Which would suck since I still want to get him, but it’s not a huge deal if I miss out on them. I’m still hoping that they might eventually add zodiac units into the permanent pool so that we don’t miss out on them permanently, but that’s a bit of a pipe dream.

The ‘prize showcase’ stuff seems . . . interesting, but I probably still won’t do more than just the free daily tenfolds for the next banner. I don’t want to be tempted right before the NY banner, especially since I already have all of the units getting Mana Spiral upgrades, so it’s a pretty useless banner for me.

I also just wanna point out that Ebisu is an EXTREMELY good cat dragon and I love him :)

It’s not a big surprise to me that we’re getting a platinum summon for the NY banner, but it’s interesting to me that you’ll be able to do the adventurer and dragon platinum banners three times each. I guess it’s their way of getting a bit more profit out of people, but it’s something I can deal with. It’s still a relatively low limit on how much diamantum you can spend on it, and it looks like there’s only gonna be three 5-star units to worry about, if you include the dragon, so you might not even need to summon three times on each one to get what you want.

To be completely honest I’m not a F2P player, but I doubt I’d do more than like one of the adventurer platinum summons. Mostly because the new 5-stars just don’t interest me a whole lot, from what we’ve seen of them. I’ll at least use my regular summoning resources first and see what I get. With the resources I’ll have stocked up by the time the event starts, I should be able to do over 200 summons on it right away, so hopefully that’ll get me what I want. Then I’ll start saving for the next gala.

Oh yeah and they also officially announced the Monster Hunter collab, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, lmao. I’m not into that series so I don’t really have anything to say about it, but I’m glad that lots of people seem excited about it. It seems a bit boring that we might only be getting a free dragon out of it, but oh well.

Anyway I’m pretty happy with everything they showed. All of the stuff with the new bosses, weapons, adventurer buffs, etc etc, really seem like they’re going to go a long way toward making the endgame less punishing, and team comps more varied. It looks like they’re addressing a lot of the main issues people have had, so I’m glad they seem to be handling it well.

[kyogre-blue]

This is just letting out some thoughts. 

The 3.5 livestream was sure a thing, and I still don’t know what to think of the banner decisions they announced. 

I know there’s a conspiracy theory going around about how, partway through this beta, there was a leak that the upcoming banners were being changed, and that what we’re getting is some kind of sudden reversal based on some issue(s) we can only speculate about. I don’t necessarily want to subscribe to this, but I feel like... it’s so weird there’s got to be something going on? 

First of all, we’re going into a Mondstadt event patch with zero Mondstadt reruns, Eula being MIA for 14 months and counting (now the longest gap between banners), and Albedo appearing in two livestream versions for no apparent reason. That’s weird. 

Second, Dehya is going into the Standard pool, but only after 3.6 (so not this coming patch, but the one after that), when the only previous addition was due to a whole new element being added while she’s the second pyro claymore, and her kit is bizarrely undercooked with almost no changes during beta. 

It seriously does feel like a last minute swerve because something isn’t working out. 

The new leaks coming out are saying that we’re going to have nine Standard banner 5 stars (so two more after Dehya) by the time Fontaine starts, but I’m not really sure how to read this either. On the one hand, it might mean there’s some greater plan to expand the standard pool and this was the intent for Dehya all along. But on the other hand, you can go full conspiracy mode as well and say that this is part of the swerve and there are just more problems than Dehya alone. 

I do kind of wonder if their tight release schedule is catching up to them. Wonder if it’s going to crash and burn, which would be amusing in a way. 

For my personal plans, it’s not a huge deal. I had already basically decided to get Ayaka, so I’ll just roll for her instead of Eula in 3.5. Mika is even on her banner, so that works out. The only complication is still the same issue that I’m at 65 pity, so if I win 50/50, I’ll need to keep rolling to get him. 

I just also need to prefarm Ayaka now, which is... fine. Annoying, but fine, especially since she’s on the second half. 

For 3.6, we’re supposedly still getting Baizhu and Kaveh (we’ll know for sure in about a week), but now I really wonder what the reruns are going to look like. It was theorized as Nilou, Nahida and Shenhe, but Shenhe’s here, so... The current Baizhu kit leaks are obviously unreliable but also deeply uninspiring, so I might just skip 3.6 to save.