Topic: Honkai Star Rail

@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.

@themightyant - Good luck mate, really hope you get her. I've had a huge run of luck on these banners. I pulled E1 Castorice and her signature LC, Fugue and got E2 Clara in 180 pulls total. I'm in two minds now. I could get E2 Castorice or keep the guarantee for Sunday rerun. Wise move is wait and get Sunday for Aglaea/Mydei but her E2 is absolutely broken lol. Hard choice!

@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.

@z0d15g0d - I guess Sunday makes more sense for my account overall. If I hadn't got E1 Castorice I wouldn't even be considering E2 so I'm happy with what I have there. I'll get that on rerun.

@themightyant - I used smart discard to get rid of 650 relics, I was sick of looking at them and not doing anything about it so I let the game decide and to hell with it. Almost all my main use characters have an S rank for relics in the build guide now so I just keep an eye out for the ones I can improve.

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.

@themightyant - They knew exactly what they were doing with Castorice's LC options! If you don't have Bailu's sig LC then just bite the bullet and get at least one copy from the BP. It sucks but you were considering dropping a fiver on the fuel and tickets thing, might as well spend an extra £3 and get a good LC and some mats to offset build costs.

@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.

@themightyant - I can put the BP LC on her for you to test but I have it at s3 so that would skew your impression by quite a lot. I know @z0d15g0d has it too not but sure what superimposition level it is though.

@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.

@themightyant - NP, look for a support with 58 to 68% CR (58% if running RMC) that will give 100% CR in battle. If you put Ruan Mei in the team instead of RMC her team spd buff does not affect Castorice or Tribbie's relic set bonus. That's still applied regardless of a team mate buff or a DU blessing.

@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

@themightyant - Wise choice, her f2p option is pretty terrible. Yeah she certainly hits hard, enjoy it while it lasts. Creep and more ungodly amounts of enemy HP are only a patch or two away lol.

@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.

@themightyant - Pretty sure I read that Kafka is first in line for an overhaul, really hope that's the case as I invested heavily into DoT and its practically unusable these days, great if you want 27 cycle clears though lol.

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.

@z0d15g0d I really liked the setup in 3.0 but then it went severely downhill. I don't have a huge problem with the story they are telling, there's some interesting stuff buried in there and it might pay off, but the problem is HOW the story is told. They just seem to drag everything out, a complete overwritten yap-fest that sends me to sleep (same as Penacony).

Honestly the whole 3.x arc so far could have been told better in less than a quarter of the time. I don't feel Jarilo VI & Xianzhou Luofu had this problem, or not as badly. I'm sure it's due to the 6 week update schedule where they can only make a few hours content in that time and feel they need to drag it out to keep people engaged and playing... and i'm sure they are right, i'm sure they have the data over many games that more people would likely leave and not come back if they only put out a couple of hours of new story content every 6 weeks.

It's a fundamental problem for me where they are designing the game for the WRONG reasons, they are designing for engagement not for enjoyment. I don't care about their bottom line and how many players there are, I care if it's a worthwhile use of my time. And I feel the opportunity cost of what i'm NOT playing while I play this game is huge.

I'll be honest, i'm considering quitting HSR again because of this. It's not getting better, if anything it's getting worse and I realise how much time it takes up. Those 10-15 minutes a day on dailies add up, plus weeklies, plus story, plus events. It's a lot, and it's not very good imo. What else could I be playing in that time?

For example, I'm currently playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and it's utterly brilliant, it's so much that this game isn't. In less than a week I have significantly moved the story forward in a meaningful way, I've laughed and cried and been moved by the storytelling and it feels like a completely worthwhile use of my time, i've begrudged having to do dailies and simulated universe instead. Granted most games aren't this good, CO:E33 is probably the best turn based (J)RPG I've played in a decade, but it is making me question my gaming choices even more harshly than I was before. But I was thinking this before.

Sorry for the downer post, but I'm really frustrated with HSR right now, it's just not very good imo. How do you and @Shigurui feel?

As for stats I didn't pay much attention to them for all the reasons above, but I did see:

• 14.5 million max damage (what's even the point of this with things like Simulated Universe's absurd multipliers)
• Most played DPS: Firefly then Acheron
• Most played support: Pela, then Fu Xuan (I didn't get Aventurine till later)

@themightyant Yes that's exactly my issue with it at the moment and it's compounded with the fact I'm not really keen on the setting and the lack of VA also. Jarilo VI & Xianzhou didn't have this issue with story pacing or dialogue padding. Each update could be completed in a couple of hrs not dragged out to 8. You might be right that they are developing for engagement which is probably why they still haven't added an option to skip like in WuWa.
Clair Obscur looks interesting so might give that a go. I got back into Fallout 4 now that there's a huge chunk of DLC and graphical updates to enjoy.