Yeah, I definitely should have asked sooner.

And as for the Battle Pass, I definitely don't need it there so long as I keep up with other stuff. I've consistently been maxing out the weekly limit with time to spare.

 

Damn the codes already expired? Oof

Got a C1 Bennett yesterday tho!

 

Yeah, the livestream related codes always expire the evening the streams come out (if you in the US and YMMV depending on your timezone) so you have a very narrow window to redeem the codes. If you didn't check it that same day, it's over already.

 

I feel like the main draw of the Battle Pass is the slight boost in resource gathering economy along with an additional 5 Intertwined fates and a few hundred Primos, conceivably enough to net one extra banner pull per BP period. Along with an exclusive namecard and decent four star weapon of your choice from the pool.

Frankly I think Welkin Moon is a better draw, though archon would likely be better at describing the match behind that then me since I'm F2P.

 

That's exactly what it is for me. Unfortunately I do whale in Genshin and when you're leveling up 5* weapons and characters to 90, you need a **METRIC FUCK-TON** of Purple Books and Blue Ores.

It takes the same total amount of books to level up a 5* character, but 5* weapons need significantly more materials. To achieve lvl.90 for weapons, it takes 607 Blue Ores and 604,265 Mora for a 4* weapon and 910 Blue and 906,445 Mora for 5*

Not to mention Artifact upgrade costs, weapons refinements, Talent upgrade costs...

Yeah the BP really helps me a ton by injecting a lot of necessary Books, Ore and Mora in preparation for a character. I'm about half of where I need to be to max Yoimiya when I get her and I'm sitting cool at about over 4 million Mora right now.

If you DPS with Ningguang, Klee or Yanfei, then Solar Pearl isn't a horrible choice. I was a Solar Pearl Klee main for a long, long time. While it doesn't buff your charge attack, and Klee is a CA based character, it does make your Jumpty Dumpty a bit more relevant and also your normals more relevant.

But the biggest advantage is that it's a Crit Rate weapon. You don't have to worry too much about Crit Rate and you can throw a Crit DMG circlet on her instead.

I only swapped out Solar Pearl for Lost Prayer to the Sacred Winds, which is also a Crit Rate 5* Catalyst. Straight upgrade to Solar Pearl.

 

If you're strictly looking at getting wishes, then Welkin Moon is the better deal. But as PlanckEpoch said, BP is more about the resources with a crit stat 4* as the cherry on top.

 

Huh. Was digging into Jenny Yokobori's filmography a bit more, and it turns out that despite her new-ness as an actor, she's actually managed to land one of the most illustrious gigs in the industry, with a recurring role on The Simpsons. Apparently she was cast at the beginning of this year as Kumiko Albertson (Comic Book Guy's young Japanese mangaka wife, introduced in recent seasons), replacing Tress MacNeille in the role following the show's diversity casting initiative (or more cynically, more likely a move to reduce the show's ballooning costs by reducing the recording fees of the more expensive veteran actors). Regardless, that's a helluva bullet point to stick on a resume that early in the game.


In game talk, I'm gonna have to try really hard to resist pulling on Ayaka's banner it seems. While I sorta want her, I don't think she really adds anything to my comps so I'd rather continue saving so that I have guarantee on Baal and maybe Yae and/or Sara. But her banner also sees Ningguang back on the rate-up (finally) as well as Yanfei, some of the characters I most want more Constellations on. Also Chongyun. I'll have to weigh things out. Baal's still quite a ways off. Sounds like she's not in 2.1 either.

 

Uggg, if that 4* lineup for Ayaka is true, I'm totally rolling it. Frankly, any of the 5* would be nice but I totally need some Ning dupes, some Yanfei would be nice, and I've yet to have a Chongyun in my roster.
 

 

Kamisato Ayaka teaser:

 

Finally got the friendship on Razor and Amber raised to 10 so swapped them out and put Noelle and Venti on the friendship grind team.

Noelle really is showing her need for strong artifacts as even when boosting physical damage she's only barely doing a thousand in each hit with a max level R0 Whitebind, though her Burst is hitting between 2K - 4K with help from the artifacts I've got on her right now so I just need to keep tweaking her build to see what I feel is right. Here's what I got on her right now:

• Level 0 Flower of Creviced Cliff (Archaic Petra) - Five Star
  • (Main) HP +717
  • DEF +5.8%
  • HP +4.1%
  • Elemental Mastery +23
  • CRIT DMG +6.2%
• Level 5 Feather of Jagged Peaks (Archaic Petra) - Five Star
  • (Main) ATK +113
  • DEF +5.8%
  • ATK +5.3%
  • HP 5.3%
  • DEF +19
• Level 20 Gladiator's Longing (Gladiator's Finale) - Five Star
  • (Main) DEF + 58.3%
  • HP +4.7%
  • Energy Recharge +17.5%
  • ATK 5.8%
  • HP +807
• Level 4 Gladiator's Intoxication (Gladiator's Finale) - Five Star
  • (Main) - Phys. DMG Bonus +18.6%
  • DEF +19
  • DEF + 7.3%
  • ATK +14
  • Energy Recharge +5.2%
• Level 12 Mask of Solitude Basalt (Archaic Petra) - Four Star
  • (Main) CRIT Rate +18.5%
  • CRIT DMG 11.8%
  • ATK +14
  • Energy Recharge +3.6%
  • HP +3.7%

This also gets me the Archaic Petra +15% bonus Geo DMG and the Gladiator's Finale +18% ATK bonus.

As for Venti...is his burst supposed to recharge so quickly? It's so fun to use which is why I guess his skill is kind of underpowered. I also have Sucrose and Venti on the same team so it's interesting to basically have the same skill sets twice over, but Sucrose definitely has a little more broad utility with Sacrificial Fragments giving me potentially three skill activations in quick succession to really keep enemies off their feet. Granted, my Sucrose is also C5 whereas Venti is obviously C0.

She seems to be sort of in a similar position as Eula, coming from high nobility (to say nothing of a Cyro vision), but here the difference is her family is actually well respected because they weren't asshole tyrants a thousand years ago. Where Eula has to bear the weight of that 'shame' (for the lack of a better description) and has trouble coming off as relatable to most people (granted the Lawrence name kind of makes it hard for the common folk to willingly try to understand her, given what a raging asshole her uncle proved to be this isn't surprising), Ayaka here is locked in tradition as while she appears to secretly WANT to more casual, being brought up since birth in nobility instilled a rigidity that prevents her from exploring it, plus all the absolutely insane cultural things probably in play given what era of Japanese culture Inazuma is drawing from.

 

Part of why Venti's considered so busted.


As for Ayaka, it feels a bit awkward now that they've delayed her release so long. Looking over her kit, she just seems so... basic. She seems very "starter character"-ish, like Diluc. Not a whole lot of utility or nuance in her abilities or rotations. Cryo infusion after using her Alternate Sprint adds a tiny bit mechanically to her repertoire, but it doesn't really change that much, since you tend to dash-cancel and pursue a lot in combat anyways. Looks like she might have even lost an element of her kit from the Beta version, as some of the footage I saw there showed that she once had an "execute" technique, where she'd perform a high-damage attack after exiting her dash when a nearby enemy was sub-30% health or some-odd, and that ability doesn't seem to be present in her final iteration.

I may still be tempted to make a few pulls on her banner, just because the 4*s are so stacked, especially with the few characters that I don't have a lot of Constellations on, but in the off chance I wind up pulling Ayaka, that doesn't really inspire me to build her much. More likely, she'll just end up as an "HM slave", to borrow a Pokemon term, since I don't have Mona.

 

So, would anyone be able to help me out with the Serenitea Pot traveling salesman task this weekend?

 

You can have my stuff. PM me your UID.

 

Yup. Venti is literally a hoover vac in the form factor of a cute boy.

I have around 180 Energy Regen in him and the only thing slowing me down is his Ult CD.

 

Interesting that the survey this round actually made note of the lip-syncing issues in cutscenes. I wonder if they're actively contemplating an engine update to help fix that?

Full lip-synch might not be wholly feasible, with the multiple different language options and the amount of work it entails to fine tune that sort of thing (there is technology available to do it "automatically", but it still needs a helping hand), but I'd be perfectly happy with a basic "mouth flap" animation cycle that's timed with the audio file lengths so that you're not watching characters spout entire sentences with their lips firmly sealed.

 

I actually wonder if their game infrastructure could support different voice languages for different characters. I have this thing where it would be GREAT if Liyue characters could speak in Mandarin, Inazuma in Japanese and Mondstadt in English....

 

So, standard warning here: the new update on Tuesday also brings with it the beginning of the next Battle Pass. Put off doing any of your weekly chores (Bosses, Bounties, Requests) until after the update, if you want to speed-run the BP and try to clear it as fast as possible.

[edit] Erika and a great big bunch of the cast being wholesome for 30 mins:

 

Kamisato Ayaka character demo:

 

Somebody got inspired by the re-use of the Childe boss music in the web event

https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Im...e_music_from_the_mysterious_voyage_web_event/

 

Well, shit. My first "Reddit Pull".

As much as I talked up not doing many pulls, I wound up going to soft pity trying to get another Yanfei (after my RNG went purely to Ningguang and Chongyun, maxing them both). And then this happened: