Genshin Impact at AR 50 – Settling in for the long haul

I started Genshin Impact back in November with the release of version 1.2. Now, after reaching AR 50/world level 6 (soon to be 7) and doing virtually all quests, I’ve largely “caught up” to the main body of players who started before me. I’ve got a decent main team, some good (4-star) weapons, and some barely acceptable artifacts. The rest is just self-directed self-improvement while I wait for the next big area to be released.

This is the great drawback of jumping into an MMORPG(ish)/gacha game shortly after release – there just isn’t much content yet. Though with the millions that Mihoyo is raking in every day, they really need to step up their game before fans get bored and run away. And by “fans” I mean “other players who aren’t me,” because I have nowhere to run away to. For now, anyway.

Obvious, it’s not that I don’t have any other games to play. Nah, if anything I’ve got way too many. It’s just that I’ve been spoiled rotten by the easy accessibility, bright colors and free exploration of Genshin Impact. It’s right there on my PC, it’s pretty, it’s immediately rewarding, and there hasn’t been any annoying main story to give me pressure in a while.

Contrast that with the most recent “regular” game I played: The Alliance Alive. Lovely little game, nothing against it. But tiny world is tiny! Bad music is bad! Dull colors are dull! Small cast is small! Boring, repetitive battles are boring and repetitive! etc etc. This is all stuff I wouldn’t mind so much if Genshin Impact wasn’t right there next to it like the smug top student the teacher always uses as an example.

So for any readers hoping I’ll get over my gacha game obsession and return to regular gaming soon, nnnoooo… that’s probably not gonna happen. It’s much more likely that I’ll get caught by the next shiny thing, like Bandai’s upcoming Blue Protocol. To successfully play “regular” games these days, I’ll either have to play something relatively similar, like Atelier Lulua or the upcoming Rune Factory 5 (bright colors, lots to explore, etc.) or completely different like a puzzle game, otome game or dungeon crawler. There’s little ground in between.

Oops, I digressed. I forgot what the purpose of this post was… Oh yeah, as I was saying, I’ve reached the stage in Genshin Impact where my progress is up to me. That means I can now take things slower, go where I want to go and work on what I want to work on. In theory.

Thanks to some gacha luck, the Xiao pull the other day and the ongoing “Stand By Me” event, I’ve got quite a number of new characters to raise. Especially Xingqiu, Ningguang and Keqing, who are said to be really good. I also need a non-Barbara, non-Bennett healer, so I’ll be giving Diona a bit of attention.

For world exploration, domains and commissions, I’m satisfied with my main team of Bennett, Xiangling, Fischl and either Chongyun or Xiao as the situation demands. Benny brings the heals and buffs, Xiangling is good for pyro resonance + AFK attacking with Guoba and Pyronado. Fischl is also good for AFK bonus damage, thanks to Oz who hits like a truck lately, best bird ever. Chongyun’s ice field gives good damage boosts to Pyro attacks, but the guy himself… I’ve failed him:

I haven’t gotten any good Crit Rate damage Gladiator artifacts since I started the game, so he still has his base rate, which is awful. So I need to do some farming for him. A crit-rate boosting claymore would be nice too. For all prospective players: Crit Rate and Crit Damage are king. If you get any artifacts with them as main/sub stats, don’t fodder them away easily!

For the next couple of weeks, my focus will be:
– Uncapping Chongyun, Xiao and Fischl past level 80. Actually raising them to level 90 would take too long, but the unlock alone boosts damage.
– Uncapping the weapons for my main team past level 80.
– Uncapping and leveling Sucrose and Barbara to level 80. They’re useful supports, but this isn’t a priority.
– Uncapping and leveling Diona, Keqing, Ningguang and Xingqiu, but very slowly and lazily.
– Making a final attempt to get good artifacts for my main team. The game knows what I need and refuses to drop it.
– Raising talents to at least level 9 when all of that is done and I have the money to spare.

It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s going to take a looong time because of the resin (stamina) system. That means, despite my boasting about “going where I want to go,” there’s only so much I can achieve in each day towards my main goals. Log in, do commissions, use resin on domains/bosses, log out. All these things won’t take more than an hour a day to do, and that’s if I dawdle.

Which means… strictly speaking, I should be able to fit other games into my busy schedule if I really want to. And indeed I just tried a regular PC game an hour or two ago. And it froze on me 5 minutes in. Riiight. I took that as a sign from my desktop that it prefers Genshin Impact, so it’s back to Teyvat I go. Adios~

Genshin Impact at AR 47 – Pulling for Xiao

Genshin Impact joke:

-How do you know a player is saving for Xiao?
-Don’t worry, they’ll tell you!

Yup, yup, I’m one of the many, many players who has been saving almost all of her primogems just to pull a particular 5-star character. In my case, it’s not because I like Xiao in particular, but because I want a 5-star character he’s the most appealing. Not in terms of personality – he’s a bit of a jerk, but a justified one because he has the right to be left alone if he wants to be. And not in terms of playstyle, because I find polearms messy and unnecessarily flashy. I like swords and claymores better. I hit you here, and I hit you there, and then I hit you here again. With polearms, they’re on one side of the enemy, then whoosh, they’re on the other side, then whack, they’re flying off all over the place. It’s a mess.

No, the real reasons why I’m pulling for Xiao are as follows:

1) He’s cute. Right~~~~? That over-the-top edgy design, the tattoos, the spiky shoulder pads, it’s so crazy. I love it!
2) I only have one 5-star character so far (Mona, who I just pulled yesterday), and I need at least one solid carry. Sorry Bennet!
3) None of the past limited 5-stars appealed to me except Klee, who was before my time. None of the future ones do either. That means I might as well get Xiao because at least he’s cute. Right~~~?

We don’t raise useless freeloaders in this house.

And so let’s see what I can get with my 19,000 primogems and 35 past wishes. For the sake of non-players, I should explain that Genshin Impact also has a “sparking” system kind of like Granblue Fantasy. If you pull (a.k.a. “wish”) 180 times on a limited banner, you’re guaranteed to get a copy of the limited 5-star for that banner. It’s a little more complicated than that, with a 50-50 chance at 90 pulls and things like “hard pity” and “soft pity.” You can search for a GI wish guide if you need full details, but this is the important part. This is just a casual blog and it’s my first tme navigating the system as well.

The actual wishing process

Aight, enough talking. The Version 1.3 patch just rolled out today so I need to see what exciting events are available for me to take part in. In fact, I should try Xiao’s Trial Run to see if he’s any good at level 80 with high talent levels, and a leveled-up 5-star weapon I don’t have a hope of pulling… these trial runs are so fake, lol…

Yeah, that was pretty good. Good damage, not as swooshy as I’d expected and the health loss isn’t something that healing can’t keep up with. Diluc is the 5-star I want most, but I feel good about pulling for Xiao.

As you can see, I don’t have any Intertwined or Acquainted fates because I use them all immediately. Let’s start.

… and I pulled Diona right away. She’s so small and cute. I don’t need her for now, but you can never pull too many characters in a gacha game. BTW, I would love to pull a Diluc. Did I say that already? Just putting that out there in case Mihoyo’s spying on me, ladida~šŸŽµ

I get a 4-star every 8-10 wishes, the rest are all 3-stars and not worth showing. There’s no point showing the 4-star weapons either, come to think of it. 5-star is where it’s at~

Beidou get on wish 44… I think… Roughly keeping track but not really.

She’s my brother’s main DPS so I’ve seen her in action. Cool to have her in person, but I already have Fischl as a handy support, so I don’t need an electro 4-star. I’ll have to dig more into what she offers before saying that definitively, though. I haven’t been keeping up with the Genshin Impact meta at all.

Pulled a 4-star weapon (Sacrificial Sword) and then pulled a Beidou constellation (copy/duplicated) around wish 56. That’s natural because she’s a rate-up character on this banner. And if she wants to join me, the more the merrier (performs best Electro Cicin Mage impression).

Another 4-star weapon (The Flute) and then Xinyan around 67. Love her design but I’m already raising Xiangling and Bennett as pyro characters.

You never know, Genshin Impact could be one of those games that buffs characters later on. Or there could be content that needs extra parties to complete, etc.

And on pull 76, right on schedule…

Xiao came home to mama~

And that was the end of the wishing spree. Yes, just like that.

After that, I tried Diona’s test run, but I’m not that good with archers. That’s why I didn’t pull for Ganyu even though by all accounts she’s the better character. I ended up finishing this test run with Kaeya and Lisa ^^;;

Tried Beidou, and I liked using her except for the whole “stand still and charge R2 while enemies are trying to kill you” thing. Her swings feel a little faster and less heavy than Chongyun’s as well. Same for when I tried Xinyan. Just a little faster than Chongyun. Her burst attack is fun too, though it would make co-op a visual nightmare. All-in-all, none of these 4-stars are worth the time to build right now but once I ascend my mains at AR50, I probably won’t have anything better to do with my time.

Now on to more pressing matters. I still have 13062 gems and now 5 Intertwined Fates (bought from Paimon’s store). Along with daily commissions, chests and events, it’s not impossible for me to get the 14,400 primogems I need to get another 5-star. Thing is, it has only a 50% chance of being Xiao again. It’s not guaranteed to be Diluc either. And the 4-stars I’ll pull along the way are all characters I don’t need. So, I have the choice to save for the next banner with 4-stars I want (Bennett, Ningguang) or pull them all in the hopes of getting another Xiao.

Right now it’s too soon to decide. …Though I can’t resist another sneaky 10 pulls to see if I get anything good… ayup, Xinyan constellation and Diona constellation. This is known in the business as “the writing is on the wall.” I’m going to wait and see what more experienced and future-oriented players have to say after testing Xiao. I still have two weeks to decide whether the gains from a single Xiao constellation are worth the loss of constellations for better 4-stars. I’m leaning heavily towards the 4-stars, so no sudden moves from me. I’ve got some Acquaint Fates to satisfy any pull cravings with.

In the meantime… I should be building my Xiao… but I don’t have any good weapons and artifacts for him, so there’s no rush. My biggest priority is doing limited-time event quests and farming Noblesse Oblige artifact sets for Best Buddy Bennett and like half the other characters. Busy, busy, busy…

Why does the map suddenly seem dimmer?

Quick thoughts on gacha before I go.

Now that I’m done getting Xiao, I’ve gotta say… Genshin Impact’s gacha is really anticlimatic compared to Granblue Fantasy‘s IMO. The whole visual experience is clunkier and less impressive. Even the premium currency looks more exciting in GF.

More to the point, the character pool in GI is much smaller because GI is only 5 months old, versus almost 7 years for Granblue Fantasy. That’s a massive difference, so perhaps this comparison is not entirely fair. After all, very few characters have been released so far. This means you’re likely to pull only the rate-up characters in Genshin, no matter how much you wish. Contrast that with Granblue, where you will pull a huge variety of SR and SSR characters, often not even the ones you want. Genshin‘s take on things is really good if you just want to build a few characters, but it makes for boring wish sessions.

Clarifying note: in GI you don’t need that many characters anyway, so there’s nothing wrong with building the same few characters. The number of characters you can actively use is 4, with the exception of an 8-man party for a special domain. It’s not like Granblue where you build a party of 6 characters for 6 elements, plus sub parties in other rarities, plus extra parties for certain events. So it’s not a bad thing that the pool is so limited, but as I said, it’s boring.

Another criticism (?): In Granblue, you pull a character and that’s it. You’ve got them. Any strengthening efforts come from grindable items, battles, your weapon grids, etc. Meanwhile, Genshin Impact locks its characters’ true strength behind “constellations” obtained by getting duplicates of a character. So for example, just pulling Xiao isn’t enough to get him at his full potential. I need to pull him 6 more times, for a total of 7 pulls, to get the “best and truly broken” Xiao. So the excitement you feel at pulling just one copy is just… y’know? I mean I’m still happy, but there’s definitely something missing.

Luuuuckily enough, I’m not playing Genshin Impact for the characters. I was playing for the exploration and the combat. There’s too little of the former and too much of the latter lately, but I’m a patient gamer. I can wait for Inazuma patch for more excitement. In the meantime, I’ll be building my parties.

Other games lol?

IIRC I mentioned in the last post that I was going to play some more of The Alliance Alive. Believe it or not, I actually did play a little more. It’s a nice little game, nothing too special. But that “nothing too special” aspect is its downfall. The graphics aren’t that polished, the world map is tiny for now, the music is bad, the combat is decent but the enemies are weak and boring. It’s decent, but it will take more than “decent” to wean me off Genshin Impact. And so with that, it’s back to the resin mines I go!

Genshin Impact at AR43 – Not much to do until next update

After gaming for so many years, I know myself well enough to know that rationing out games I really like doesn’t work. Instead it’s better to binge-play until I either finish the game or get tired of it. Or, in the case of Genshin Impact, until I run out of content.

As I mentioned in the last post on the subject, there’s a resin (stamina) gate in Genshin Impact that restricts your progress so you can’t grow too quickly. In addition to that, I also ran into a mora (money) gate where I’m perpetually too broke to upgrade characters and weapons even if I have the materials. Instead I have to spend more resin grinding mora leylines for paltry sums of money. Which I don’t really mind, but again the puny amount of resin means you can’t do it for long.

In short, it’s only been 2 months since I started Genshin Impact, but I’m already missing the days when progress was swift, exploration was fun and I actually looked forward to getting new characters in the gacha. Right now I don’t want to pull anybody or anything because it’s just too much work to grind up money and materials to level them.

It’s better to stick with my current team of Traveler, Xiangling, Bennett and optional extra, at least until I get one solid team to level 80. Then I’ll consider building a second team (Fischl? Kaeya?) to maybe do Spiral Abyss, maybe not. I don’t want to be holed up in a dungeon battling when I could be roaming the world.

That’s my issue right now. I’ve almost run out of places to explore. Not 100%, because I still have about 14 Geoculus and 1 Anemoculus to retrieve, but close enough that I’m not getting a kick out exploration any more. My daily routine goes like this:

1. Log in.
2. Do daily commissions.
3. Beat world bosses for ascension materials (only Anemo and Electro Hypostasis right now).
4. Beat some domains or leylines for cash and materials.
5. Do whatever world event is going on.
6. Twiddle thumbs briefly, log out.

That’s the routine until the next area gets unlocked and I can explore again. Open world games should have open worlds, right? Not repetitive titchy little rooms where you spam the same attacks on the same small group of enemies and palette swaps. Inazuma when? Some rumors say early February, others say March, still others say as late as June 2021. Basically I’ve got nothing to look forward to for a while, so it’s time to spin my wheels.

In the meantime, it’s on to other games! Or rather back to my scheduled list. I still haven’t bothered to fix my laptop, but I still have the 3DS, PSP, PS2, PSVITA (TV) and my desktop so I’m actually spoilt for choice. I’m also resolved to read at least one new book every week, plus I have a lot of work to do IRL so it’s okay for Genshin Impact to go on the shelf for a bit.

What I really want to play is more Picross… seriously contemplating buying a Switch soon just for the Picross, no joke… Also planning to wipe all my past 3DS Picross save files and start afresh… The Alliance Alive > Picross e > Atelier Lulua > Picross e2, and on and on. Let’s see what happens this time to completely derail my plans.

Happy New Year 2021! No resolutions!

random happy new year 2021 imageHappy New Year everyone! I would have written this earlier, but I scalded my hand with hot water >_<. It hurrrrrt! But a little iced water and some salt (folk remedy) kept it from swelling and now I’m fine. Be careful when making tea this year, everyone!

Now then, on to gaming resolutions for 2021. I have none! Zero! Because I didn’t achieve any of the resolutions I set for 2020, so I’m just going to carry those forward to this year. I didn’t play any of the games I spent time One Hour Reviewing either, so I already have several games lined up to play this year. If I somehow make it through all of them before the halfway point of 2021, then I’ll think about setting resolutions.

Come to think of it, I didn’t achieve anything in any aspect of life this year, not just gaming.šŸ˜‚ Personally, professionally, financially, spiritually, everything-ly, you name it, I got nothing done. 2020 is like a giant blank on my resume of life, hahaha. I can’t even remember much of what happened between March and December 2020, it’s very serious.

So my IRL resolution for this year is to at least have something to look back on in January 2022 and say “Okay I got this done, I achieved this thing, I went to that place, etc.” Though with the way the world is now, that’s a tall order. You know what, I think making it to January 2021 is achievement enough, right? šŸ¤£Okay then, I won’t beat myself up any more haha.

Enjoy your new year, everyone! Have lots of fun!

Belated Merry Christmas greetings!

Better late than never: Merry Christmas everyone!

This year I couldn’t go to our annual family Christmas pig-out fest. Not for COVID reasons (it’s not that serious in my area) but for various IRL reasons that required me to stay close to home. My aunt still sent me my share of delicious food and cake, but it’s just not the same, y’know? But compared to a lot of people around the world, I know I’m really blessed so I’m not complaining at all.

Besides, spending Christmas at home with a good game isn’t a bad deal. And failing that, Genshin Impact will do. šŸ˜‚ I have many other games I could be playing, but I don’t want to play them so what can I do? I already made the decision long ago not to force myself to play games just to have something to blog about.

So more Genshin Impact it is. I ran out of the main story quests. Liyue storyline was just flashy garbage so I don’t have much hope for future storylines. It’s enough if the gameplay is fun. With that, it’s time to get back to strengthening my peeps and finalizing my parties. Enjoy your holidays, everyone!