Topic: Honkai Star Rail

@Shigurui @z0d15g0d One other question. Who did you all remove from the standard banner?
I got rid of Yanqing, Bailu and Gepard. I have them all already and don't want dupes. I haven't even built Yanqing and Gepard, have either of you?

EDIT: I've just seen that this change ONLY seems to apply to losing the 50:50 on the character banner, not the standard banner too, so ignore the below.

I've got a standard banner 5-star coming soon so it will be interesting to see who I get. I had saved 15 wishes as I knew they were changing the format. Blade would be nice as I don't have him. E1 Fu Xuan would be great too (+30% Crit DMG to all allies). And I'll always take 5-star weapons. But I wouldn't mind any really. That's a nice change.

@themightyant I doubt they will invest in doing the dialogues later cause if they do the VA's win and not many for profit devs will be inclined to do so. Especially if they're not part of their union nor have contracts with them.

I got rid of Bailu, Welt and Gepard. Bailu for obvious reasons. Gepard for pretty much the same reasons as Bailu and Welt as I only got him at the tail end of last year so I only leveled him up for the free tickets lol. Yangqin and Clara were the first 5* I got and that was a few days into playing. Back when Seele was all the rage lol.
I've got him on E3 same as Clara and if they're going to buff him at some point I'd like to get him to 6 as soon as possible so any extras can be used for more useful characters of my choice down the line.
I added Blade, Fu and Seele but to be honest I was trying not to add all 3 so more Clara chances

Finally made the call and got Luocha. Sniping Mydei after just a few pulls swung me. I then upgraded one relic and all 4 rolls went into SPD… +10 SPD substat. I’ll take it. lol.

Who did you guys get with the free 5-star?

@Shigurui Nice! Really solid set of pulls. I really like Castorice's gameplay, but unless I get super-lucky again I won't get her until maybe a rerun, even with all the freebies they are throwing at us.

Oh! And thanks for paying to keep the game going for the rest of us. lol.

I was debating the 0.99p pack or maybe even the £4.99 pack... but slippery slope. Perhaps if i'm somehow a few pulls away from a character I want before their banner ends. This is in fact the only time i've ever bought crystals in these games (on Zhongli, the second Archon, in Genshin) when I was a few wishes short of the guarantee with minutes to go on their banner.

Ah mate, no judgement, I spend money on plenty of stupider things. lol. Though just ordered a Switch 2 today and one for my mate. Any of you getting one, or interested?

Fugue to free up HMC? Hmmm. I hadn't even though of that, but currently one of my biggest pet peeves is not being able to have a MC on a team with the right path and you have to go into the settings to switch them back (and remember to do it). At least the LC and Relics swap.

Might consider that. I might want RMC on Mydei's team.

@Shigurui Thanks for the info. I don't have Rappa so will stick with HMC. But I hate constantly switching paths. I wish that you can select which path is locked to a team.

@Shigurui Lol it would be worse if you got a trash character as a Bday gift i think.

@Shigurui are there any worthwhile rewards for doing the harder difficulties? I just rush the standard one each week.

@Shigurui Oh wow I never bothered going that high as I assumed it was just Whale territory and DU takes a good few mins to get through as standard but seeing as there's jades available for my troubles I just might give it a go. Plus Cas seems like she needs a challenge till she gets creeped eventually lol.

They must realise their BM is not a sustainable plan unless it still works in 3rd impact and Genshin then they've got their winning formula sorted for the foreseeable future and are now just testing different mediums to keep things fresh for the devs not the players. I've played too many games to count with that model and it's usually after the 1 yr mark most fail. The better ones get to 2 or 3 yrs max then fall off. Genshin and 3rd have been around for 4 and 5 years right?

@Shigurui thanks dude. I’m at 58 wishes on Castorice’s banner. I figure there’s around 20+ wishes to come in the next 11 days of her banner (1600 anniversary, up to 800 from Pure Fiction, 660 from dailies + and other events) I should just about be able to guarantee a 5-star and will have to hope to win the 50:50. Even if that feels more like a 20:80 for me in this game (and 80:20 in WuWa) if I’m a few wishes short I might even pay for the £5 pack to get 6 wishes and 10 fuel.

@Shigurui yep hard choice. But reality - like my Luocha v Ruan Mei E1 dilema - is you can’t go wrong either way. Good luck with 50:50s though.

My biggest dilemma is I have almost no room for new Relics I’m almost always at the cap and they hardly ever raise it when they add new sets. There’s about to be two x3 events and I really need to have a clear out, but it just takes so long. Reality is I have too many levelled to +3 to see what the 4th substat is but I don’t have enough mats or money to level them to see which roll well and I should keep and which I should discard for XP. That means I would have to throw some that have potential.

What are your strategies for relics? What do you keep, what do you discard and how do you decide? And what do you do when you get new ones? Level them immediately? My strategy of hoarding doesn’t work with their caps.

@Shigurui Thanks for the code dude. I didn't know they did secret codes also. Tough call deciding Cas E2 or Sunday. Which do you need more? Cas now so you don't have to wait for her rerun or an even longer wait for Sunday re rerun? I recall you had a similar predicament with Acheron and you were the only one sitting pretty from getting her E2 earlier lol.

Finally caught up with the latest story. I thought the story itself was OK, but again HOW it was told was horribly overwritten, dragging out a 2 hour story for 6-8 hours. The writers think they are so much cleverer than that are, it’s a bit painful.

Slightly hilarious that people complained that so much story is told in a fade to black screen with white text… so they instead told some on a fade to white screen with black text instead… they are trolling us.

But I appreciated that they added the animations into the game itself rather than online, that was an improvement imo.

I also did the anniversary shop mini-game which was a few hours of mindless nonsense I just did in the background while watching sport. Between the two of those I had another 20 wishes and… won the 50:50 and got Castorice. Happy with that. I realised I’ve had a flourish of new characters I need to properly learn their mechanics: Mydei, Tribbie, Luocha, Remembrance TB and now Castorice.

Now just doing the seal mini-game and finishing off all the other events.

It’s super weird that Castorice only has two Remeberance light cones that really work for her, her signature and the battle pass LC. Every other F2P option is a MASSIVE downgrade, as a HP scaling character the best other options are not even on the Remebereance path and just have high base HP.

I didn’t realise that I don’t really have a good light cone for her. Don’t really want to buy the battle pass… hmm.

@Shigurui I might well do that. But I HATE feeling pushed into spending like this, feels dirty. I'll see how she runs with other 4* light cones first and maybe see if I can find a preview with the battle pass to see if it's worth it.

@Shigurui Thanks mate but not necessary. I'm sure I'll find one. Always hard to compare anyway as relics etc. are different anyway. But it will give me an idea.

@Shigurui in the end I just decided to stop being suck a tight git and paid for the battle pass weapon. Lol.

Castorice hits like a truck, I’ve barely built her, literally have some relics at lv 0 / 3 with just one substat and she still smacks. I need to get more and better relics with HP% and CD as her CR is already 100% with RMC and Netherwing on field I’m already overlapping 5-10%. And maybe a bit of SPD to push that 95

@Shigurui Indeed! That's why I didn't want to pay, but in the whole scheme of things it's a pittance.

I am intrigued to see how much they buff older characters, doubt it will be much, but might make them at least usable.

Just viewed my star rail yearly performance. Most important takeaways:

Max damage in 1 hit - 16 mil
Most used Character: Aventurine (as expected)
Most used Character Support: Fugue (I did not expect this in the slightest)

How did you guys fare and what was your most important metrics?

How are you finding Amphoreus arc? I really can't get into it. It reminds me too much of Disney's Hercules and GoW has set the bar for that time period.