My first 36 starred Abyss.
This feels so good, especially as a F2P mobile player.

 

2.2 is live, and that means EVERYBODY GETS ALOY!

Also, there are NEW voicelines for Katherine when you complete the daily commissions!

EDIT: I had enough for a ten pull on the banner. I got a 5 star. I HAVE RUSSIAN AQUAMAN NOW!

 

Dumped all my Standard Wishes, and got my first Sayu. 2 more Sacrificial Fragments as well, so whenever it is I get around to building Sucrose, she's all set with an R5 now.

Dumped all my Primos and stored Limited Wishes on the Weapon Banner, and got Skyward Atlas, then the Polar Star. Plus two of the new Claymores. Also C6 Xinyan, which is a bit of a waste since we're supposed to get a free one of her this patch. And then the dreaded C6 Bennett, so now I'm stuck with that permanent red exclamation point if/until we get the ability to turn off Constellations...

Well, I got what I wanted out of the Limited Banners for this patch, so it's back to saving full-time for Itto, most likely.

 

You mean Russian Sexman. :hearteyes:

I'm just glad we're getting a new male 5* Finally <3

 

♫Tar-tar-taglia, Shneznaya's greatest love machine...♫

The rumour mill is currently suggesting that we might see a more even split of male/female characters in the future. Early murmurings, at least. We'll see if that pans out.

 

By the way, for anybody reading this who hasn't "redeemed" the Mask of Memories and sees it listed in the forge - that's NOT a recipe to actually make the mask, that's just something the game had added to inform you of unredeemed weapon BPs.

 

Aloy has been so much fun so far.

I'm trying to decide, R3 Stringless on Venti and Skyward Harp for Aloy or Skyward Harp for Venti and R3 Stringless for Aloy?

 

If you're doing "BIG SUCC" with Venti then Stringless is where it's at. Meanwhile Aloy is straight up DPS so Skyward Harp would work better in her. Aloy's E and Q are part of her DPS rotation but the CRT Rate from the Harp can't be overlooked.

 

I'll second that call. 5* weapons should almost always go on DPS characters, while you can try to figure out works best on your supports.

In this case, I think Aloy wants to auto-attack sometimes as well, so simply going with the strongest/biggest bow you have does the trick. By comparison, Venti's attacks are largely unimpressive, while it's his Skill and Burst that do big damage (in fact, Venti still has the largest single-hit skill multiplier in the game), plus he also scales well off of Elemental Mastery, so Stringless is win-win for him.

 

Got Childe on my first pull.

 

Nice. Even after almost a year, Childe's still one of my fav's. Just such a stylish mofo. I just still haven't gotten around to building him, as I've been spending more time on his Supports (since they work well in other comps, too), and some of those have been pretty slow rolling. And then some occasional side-tracks.

Getting the Polar Star really pushes me into wanting to really bunker down and build him, though.

Childe is a very deceptively powerful character. He got slept on, hard, during his original release since nobody understood his stance mechanic and how to manage his long-ass cooldowns. They just wanted to stay in dagger mode forever and go ham, so everybody thought he was C6 whale-bait. It took quite a while for people to realize that he was extremely powerful because his reactions in dagger-stance have no internal cooldown, so he can trigger reactions like Vaporize and Electro-charged with every attack (and he attacks fast) and thus spam numbers on-screen like nobody's business. Turns out his Constellations are largely irrelevant (maybe his C1, just to smooth out sloppy rotations if you're not a particularly disciplined player), and his long cooldown is just the time you should be using to set up his Supports for another round of number explosions.

Now that I also have Ayaka, it's an even easier prospect to build him, as Peak of Vigandyr becomes a very high-value Domain, with Childe, Ayaka, Kaeya, and maybe even Barbara being able to take advantage.

 

For those that don't follow the Genshin subreddit, there's a new promo code out for some reason or other:

BSPD3ZRXU985

60 Primos + 10K Mora

 

Anyone else disappointed by the new area? Pretty much the same as the other islands but with fog.

 

Not really - though you HAVE to do the story quest or else the fog overwhelms you and teleports you back to the nearest waypoint you've activated. This is building off of the whole Storm Chasers thing you had to do to unlock the Electric Bat boss and what's really going on is we're literally seeing history. It's the lore for the Thundering Fury artifact set.

That, and I have to admit, I got chills doing the third 'perch' and you go into the Dragonspine-esque ruins chasing the feathers. Seeing the big gold disc with Celestia in profile on the wall in the mural room? It legitimately gave me pause.

 

Tsurumi Island didn't disappoint me. Inazuma is probably the best and most well defined nation thus far and the range of geographical experience is quite out there.

 

That's just my initial impression, I only started the story quest so maybe I'll come around to it.

 

Yeah, it hit me when looking at the map upon arriving at the new island that Inazuma finally feels the same size as Mondstadt and Liyue. Truly, the only thing that Inazuma was lacking in was the archon quest because that was really rushed towards the end (even if you count Raiden Shogun's story quest as a fourth act), since the resistance kind of...well, that was a whole lot of NOTHING. Hopefully they fix the pacing issues with the Sumeru storyline.

I also probably should mention I found no problem with the fog because, well, it's October. The island is spooky as hell so, hey, psuedo-halloween event.

 

Something else I noticed when 2.2 came out was that they added the treasure chest opening lines to the voiceovers, I am so glad they did that.

 

I really like the cryptic visual storytelling that Tsurumi has to offer. Yeah, the initial fog quest isn't super impressive, but once you're fully free to explore, you feel like Indiana Jones sifting through ancient tombs and cultural sites, unlocking lost mysteries.

 

For me, I didn't realize that they actually were going to do the whole lore of the Thunderbird, but immediately after it was said that the island had been deserted for ages and yet there were people on it...who all but one were looking at Paimon and the Traveler, it was pretty obvious what was going on (the idea it's a distorted time loop is neat), and I was just going "this kid is gonna fuckin die isn't he" in my head.