In depth mechanics + Teambuilding

While game throws a bunch of badly explained mechanics onto you - your first usual choice in a gacha is likely rolling gacha and getting some 3 star units to replace the garbage, right?
Welp.... it doesn't work exactly this way. Default 1 star units with max 'uptie' are way better than 'unthreaded' 2-3 stars.
And as for other mechanics - most things you need to know will be explained in the guide.

Introduction/Uptie system

The reason why 3 stars are by default much worse than 1 stars is because of mechanic called 'uptie'.

It's basically a tier from I(default) to III(maxed) with each tier costing 'threads' that you can get by exchanging any character medal(not recommended unless you are certain you don't need this type of medal) or in special thread farm dungeons.

This system not only improves all skills quite significantly but also unlocks 3rd skill and a character passive/support skill.

The main difference of 1 and 3 star unit is honestly just flat stats being IN TOTAL higher and a 'different'(not necessarily better than lower star unit) skill setup.
So an OOO unit with uptie 1 is pretty much only having weak version of skills and lacking the best skill outright.

1 star default units and default EGO get those upgrades for free on chapter 1 and 2 completion.

2 star units cost 10 and 40 threads(tier 2/3)

3 star units cost 20 and 80

Ultimately there will be stages to grind this thread, so long term it's not a problem but until character is uptie 3 - it's just outright worse than O tier character.

Considering the fact that new player won't be able to uptie 3 everything very fast - most of your team will ideally consist of only O tier units with maybe 1 OO or OOO for quite a while when starting out.
Some events or dev giveaways might speedup this process, but this is how it generally goes.

Default Character top tier party

For the core 3 characters(will be your starters in mirror dungeon):

Faust - default EGO is amazing AoE that is easy to fill and synergizes well in the party.
Great debuffer too - her skill 3 is a potentially 2 attack down move with 1 attack down being guaranteed. This is arguably best anti boss debuff.

Ryoshu and Rodion - both are amazing damage dealers and synergize pretty well.
Rodion is probably the weakest link, but bleed helps in boss battles a lot and if you synergize it with other units that have bleed count - you can get amazing results.

Certainly take Hong Lu instead for mirror dungeon if you have his 2 star version.

Those 3 pretty much guarantee a win in Mirrored Dungeon, very likely even on full 'auto' play as long as you focus on leveling them up and taking pretty much nearly anything along for the ride.


The 2 extra characters:
This is more debatable, but I would say

Hong Lu + Sinclair - those synergize pretty well with the rest of the party while being pretty solid.

Hong Lu is IMO a no brainer, you just have to worry a bit about him not taking damage and he becomes powerhouse. Main problem is Hong Lu 2/3 star are both also godly which is the only reason I didn't put him into 'core members'. If you get the 2 star one - he is an absolute beast that you WILL always use.

Sinclair is kinda.. there. A solid clash winner while being a good synergy.

Heathcliff is a worthy mention - while is not too synergetic in this party, as an individual he packs an amazing power for a 1 star, worthy of top 3 individually for sure.
He is also blunt.

If you want more details on how to build a decent team - check the coin section mechanic explanations and basic teambuilding.

At the very worst you will have to level this party a bit via mirror dungeon to beat some of chapter 3.
Currently team can handle any stage but main version of it has most problem in chapter 3 stages since a lot of stuff resists slashing.
10 turn fights of chapter 3 on 3 wave enemies require inserting lvl ~15+ heathcliff and meursault 1 stars to cover blunt weakness instead of Sinclair/Rodion.

Overall if you level the above 7 characters - you will have a solid setup both against abno/slash weakness fights(default party) and blunt weakness fights(mostly chapter 3 human weakness) which insert Heath/Meur instead of Rodion/Sin

Enemy resisting your damage type is in most cases meaning that you want to swap that ally out for that specific battle.
Exclusions being characters like Hong Lu 2 stars who is simply too much of a powerhouse to swap out.
This team being 'top tier' assumes you are doing at least 'neutral' damage against the enemy.

TLDR:
Faust, Hong Lu, Ryoshu - in any party.

Rodion, Sinclair - ends up mostly slash party.

Heathcliff, Meursault - ends up mostly blunt party.

This is enough to win any currently available content. I use slash variation for mirror.
Biggest improvements to this party are 2 star Hong Lu - the current king of the game.
And 3 star Ryoshu - great antiboss paired with Rodion.

Noteworthy 2/3 stars

Currently the following are certainly worth threading up:

2 Star:

Kurokumo Hong Lu - this is pretty much arguably strongest unit in the game right now.
Purely slash damage.

What it does is basically one shot(well, unless it's resistant to slash damage type) almost any non boss enemy with less than 4 bleed by having double the amount of coins.
And no, not with skill 3. It's skill 2, meaning you have 2 of them in the skill pool.

His skill 3 is also pretty good, not as good as skill 2 in terms of power but still a powerhouse move with guaranteed 5 paralysis on hit.

This makes him a particularly deadly early combat(usually hardest part of combat) character since a good matchup for him pretty much ensures you have 1 less enemy to take care of.

If your team lacks bleed - you can technically keep having full power of this skill infinitely.

Needless to say if you have him - he is by far top priority to thread up.

Shi Ishmael - pretty good unit based on new content.of railway where speed of clears is important and you can easily abuse her under 50% HP bonuses.


3 star:

Tingtang Hong Lu - yep, it's very sad that pretty much all Hong Lu are top tier... but what can you do.
This one is slash/pierce hybrid.

This Hong Lu is a bit more tricky to use and it's main use is the fact that it's strongest skill can kill 2 enemies in 1 turn.
Basically if enemy dies with his strongest skill - he will use the skill again on someone else.
Only works once, so can't chain kill whole enemy team.
I would say he is not worth if you have 2 star one since the 2 star one is just too good.
He is overall a 'casino' - his skills can deal massive damage but he relies on coin getting 'heads' for all of his effects.

Also requires ideally manual play to make use of him.

R corp Heathcliff - he is an ammo user and if you were remotely into speedrunning of Ruina then you know that ammo is the true king if you use it correctly.
Fully pierce damage.

That being said he is a 'rusher' rather than boss killer. Similar to 2 star Hong Lu he shines at considerably improving the early combat.
The only downside is having to bother with manual'ing him. For example sometimes it's better to just defend instead of wasting ammo.
Once he is out of ammo - he becomes extremely weak.
Is a bit RNG in terms of getting 6+ speed to become a true beast(or as much of a beast as rabbit can be) since he has no guaranteed means to get it early into the fight and loses a lot of power when he doesn't reach it.

W Don - good rolls overall and very strong charge move. Charge is generally not too hard to get and pairs well with Telepole EGO if you have it.
Slash/pierce damage.

Kurokumo Ryoshu - she is only somewhat noteworthy.
Fully pierce damage type, yep, not slash.

Mostly for her 3rd skill giving a guaranteed bleed count(amount of ticks!!!) +3, which is a massive damage boost if you focus highly on bleed damage.
She will likely become a must have for any bleed party.
Mostly anti boss character.

Kurokumo Rodion - another one that is only slightly noteworthy.

Just like Ryoshu - she is bleed oriented, but instead of bleedcount she focuses on bleed potency.
Yet another character which is mostly for bossing, but unlike Ryoshu - she is slightly better for fast combat due to having crit + big bleed stacks.
Likely yet another permanent member of any bleed oriented team.

Hammer Meur - blunt/pierce hybrid.
A very solid anti boss with very good skill 2/3 but extremely terrible skill 1.
His skills revolve around the 'nails' condition... which is best way to build bleed count but requires other means for bleed potency improve, it is however not immediate in it's effect.
Due to that is IMO not worth it for regular battles as he will simply constantly take damage on auto battles when his only choice ends up skill 1 and generally won't deal anything via bleed since it's delayed.
Good but only slightly noteworthy and only for bleed build.

Hammer Faust - blunt/pierce hybrid.
Yet another solid Nails unit. Provides quite a lot of guaranteed nails with all skills. Also increases damage from pierce/blunt next turn via unique 'gaze' debuff.
Also has some sanity management.
Unlike Meur her skill 1 is very solid, albeit her skill 3 is not too impressive. Skill 2 is pretty top tier, which is nice.

7 Section Outis
She is overall best clash winner in the game - amazing overall coin power AND -2 to enemy final power with ANY skill AND her speed is so high that she is pretty much guaranteed to clash with pretty much almost any enemy. If you are facing hard content with no turn limit - she is absolutely top tier.
Sadly for speedrunning railway the problem is her stat balance: low attack/high HP makes her only 'decent' choice, especially considering that Outis has one great free EGO - Ebony Stem which is amazing with higher atk stat.

OOO Liu Ishmael
A very good ally.
She is a mandatory unit if you plan to use burn party.
Very powerful if target has relatively low burn value. Up to 12 coin power on 1st skill, 19 on 2nd skill and 15 on 3rd.
Her main purpose is being able to solo upkeep the burn count infinitely without problem. She however needs allies who increase the potency of burn.

The only real disadvantages are having only 39 power at lvl 35, which is a bit on the low side for 3 star offensive unit... and her passive despite being great requires wrath resonance... with wrath being a pretty rare sin so far..

I would say those are the only characters that stand out as 'worth it'/outright better than 1 star units.
3 star units are GENERALLY better of course when fully uptied, but it's not a big difference in a lot of cases.

The above units stand out as something that feels like might last even through some powercreep if/when we get one.

The other 2/3 stars are either too situational/setup demanding OR outright not much better compared to 1 star.

Be aware that characters also have 'support' passives which work even when they are simply 'set' into team. More details in passive section.
I don't consider any passives and only judging characters solely from the active position skill combo.

New gacha banners

Will be giving my opinion on the releases of new banners for as long as I am active.

Eventually moving characters to noteworthy if they are such.

Current banner:
OOO Cinq Don
Has new mechanic called duel.
Generally strong but has to compete with W Don who got pretty solid skill 1/2 boost while already being OP.

SKill 1 condition is not too hard to fulfill to get which bumps it from meh 10 power to 14 power. But still not too impressive.
Skill 2 is 15 power... not great not terrible.
Skill 3 is 18 power by default with potential to become 24 power... but this is nearly impossible to fulfill.

Passive while good requires resonance which makes it quite meh.

She adds no utility to help the team at all, unlike W don who has fragility.

Has +4 offense level which is close to max.

IMO just uptie 4 W Don and ignore this one.

Coin System explanation

Seen this as question in steam forums so decided to copy my lengthy post into guide.

Each coin can roll heads(positive) or tails(negative)

Let us assume there are 3 coins on skill.
Each power roll has a range which is decided by base and '+' factor, let's say from 5 to 14.
Let us say you roll 0 heads - you will get a '5' roll.
Let us say you will get 3 heads - you will a '14' roll.

Each head basically adds amount of power until max available. In our case 5+3+3+3 = maximum 14

So a power of 5-14 with only 1 coin would always be either a 5 roll(tails) or 14 roll(heads).

The way this system is displayed is:
1) Inside character menu open character and open skills tab
2) Check any skill - for example skill 3 of default Faust.
On the left is a number '6'. This is default power.
On top is a small '+2' number. This means each 'heads' is +2.
And then there are also amount of 'coins' displayed by.. well.. coin icons above name of skill.
She has '2' coins.
This means her skill 3 range is 6-10.

This can only be modified by a few things like Attack power Up/Down buffs which give +1 to FINAL roll. So if you rolled 7 and have 1 attack boost - it would become 8.

And just like in Ruina - whoever gets higher roll - wins.

Coins also serve as amount of 'clashing' you can do.
If you win a clash - you remove one coin from enemy, making his power roll max lower but you CONTINUE to clash until coins are gone. You can still in some cases lose despite removing one coin from enemy. This usually happens when you had massive luck and enemy had disastrous luck.

This is why I told one coin can often suck, especially if coin power modifier is high... Imagine facing an enemy with 4 coins who can win if you roll 'tails' and he rolls at least 1 heads.

This means you need to win against him 4 times and he ALWAYS has chance to win against you.

After a clash is won - you will only hit the enemy with coins you have NOT lost during the clash.
You will however deal a bit extra damage based on length of clash.

Damage dealt depends on your base 'power' of character and the chain displayed %(which depends on a few factors, mostly damage type and how you chained the skills)

Basic teambuilding

With all the above tips in mind - how do you actually build a decent team?

I would say generally speaking my teambuilding goes this way:
1) Filter out units with 1 coin 'main skills'(skill 2/3 which you usually want to use as priority) unless BASE power of skill is high.
Losing your strongest skill on a 50/50 is just not good.

2) Check skill debuffs - if your skill is purely 'power' or has no easy to fulfill conditions for it's extra effects then it's likely not worth it unless it's default power is significantly stronger than your other options.

3) Check if ally is compatible to enemy you will face (this will only be good once you actually have already leveled all characters to at least ~20)
IDEALLY you want your basic attack type(slash/pierce/blunt) being fatal against enemy you target. But 'normal' is kinda okay.

4) Sin types are so far much less important than skill types and mostly only serve to fill the EGO.
EGO is pretty important but currently pretty limited as well.
As game expands - I can imagine EGO setups and filling your main EGOs will play a huge role on how you play the game.

Even as is - Faust Default Ego is an up to 3 target AoE which can greatly improve early battle and can be spammed with no sanity loss.

5) Generally speaking for non 'boss' fights - game plays in a 'snowball' manner. As long as you start winning you usually will win in the end. This means your early game must be strong.
This makes stuff like Ammo and extra effects where 'enemy has no X debuff' very strong.
While on the other hand making the 'charge' mechanic and overall slow buildup units pretty weak.

On boss fights it's usually vice versa. So ultimately you will likely make a team where you can handle both fast fights and boss fights.
At least 3 variations of them for blunt/slash/pierce damage types.

6) Try to have 'less' different sin types generally. This means more 'chains' being possible to both activate passives and focus on certain EGO. I would say this is not AS important, at least so far, compared to individual power of character.

Effect List

If anyone notices anything missing/wrong - let me know.
This only lists the effects you can get on your own characters. I won't bother with enemy unique effects as this would clutter guide too much.

IMPORTANT:
All effects which say 'lasts 1 turn' are USUALLY applied on next turn but if they are NOT - be aware that they can end up being fully useless as it would mean you need to apply those early into combat.
The most easy example is paralyze - if you inflict it after enemy already did his moves - it will simply do nothing and disappear next turn.

Attack/Defense power up/down - give a flat +1/-1 to FINAL skill power(after all rolls are done) of said skills(attack type skills are ALL skills aside of defend skills that you can trigger any time by clicking char portrait), lasts 1 turn only.
Let's say you have +4 attack power and 1 power down and roll a final skill power of 5 - your end result will be 8(5+4-1) power.
Very powerful since winning or losing clash is by far most important factor before anything else.

Bind - reduce speed by amount of stacks, lasts 1 turn.

Bleed - when a coin is tossed the one with bleed takes the bleed amount of damage and reduces the bleed COUNT by 1. The only way to raise bleed count is via some special skills that specifically say 'Bleed count + X'
By default all skills that add bleed will only make the skill stay at 1 bleed count maximum, meaning only it's potency increases while bleed count remains whatever it was unless it was 0.

Burn - take damage at end of turn and remove burn count(not amount) by 1. Almost identical to bleed but end of turn effect basically.

Charge - charge is a 'resource' that's consumed by some identities to get extra effects from skills. Passively reduces by 1 per turn.

Fragility(X damage type) - take flat stack amount more damage with EACH HIT of said damage type(unless it's any damage type, in which case any hit). Lasts 1 turn.

X Damage/Defense type up/down - increases/reduces of X(or any) damage/defense by a 'flat' amount mentioned with said damage type.

Haste - increase speed by amount of stacks, lasts 1 turn.

Offense/Defense Power increase/decrease - this one is increasing/decreasing offense/defense level(the thing you get for leveling up the identity), which is essentially a damage increase/decrease which works in a bit different formula from flat damage increase/decreases.

Paralyze - X(stack) amount of coins used THAT turn will have a power of 0 - this is not guaranteed to happen and is an RNG instead. If it happens - reduce stack by 1. Lasts 1 turn.

Poise - gain increased crit chance based on stack amount. Lose 1 COUNT for each successful crit. Each turn you also lose 1 count.
If anyone has details on what exactly critical does and how much crit chance is one stack - please do so in the comments.

Rupture - damage is taken when target TAKES damage. Otherwise same as burn/bleed deal fixed damage/reduce COUNT by 1 each time the above happens.

Sinking - same as Rupture but SP(sanity) damage instead. Abnormalities take damage instead since they have no SP.

Tremor - makes staggering threshold 'closer' by X amount of HP based on stack amount when hitting target with 'Tremor Burst' skill.
This one seems a bit bugged in the version of the game where the guide was done and the tremor burst in some cases does nothing.
Tremor seems to only be lost upon turn end and not upon Tremor Burst trigger. This may or may not have something to do with bug above.

Example explanation since a lot seem confused:
Enemy has 10 tremor on him.
Enemy is supposed to get 'staggered' at 50 HP.
You do a 'Tremor Burst' - enemy is now staggered at 60 HP instead.

Character/EGO passives+resistance explanation

It might seem a bit confusing how passives/resistances work, so here is all you need to know:

1) Starting Resistance/Resistance in general:
Slash/pierce/blunt resistances only depend on your identity and can't be changed.

Starting resistance against Sin type depends on the 'lowest rank' EGO you have equipped.
Upon using any other EGO - your resistances will be entirely changed to the ones that EGO you used has.

2) EGO passives:
EGO passives have only 1 condition to start working - activating that EGO in combat.
They last for entire combat after that.

EGO passives only affect the character they are used on UNLESS the effect says something that denies this.

Not all EGO passives are fully 'positive'. Sometimes they buff you a bit and debuff you a bit. Be mindful of that. Some might even completely invalidate your build.

3) Character passives:
Character passives consist of 2 parts:

1 - 'Passives', those work ONLY on deployed characters.

2 - 'Support', those work ONLY on characters that are NOT deployed.
Yes, what this means is that the characters you do not usually use are supposed to be used based on support passive. And if you don't really have much of a choice - use 1 star since they are likely the only ones who will have any passive at all for you as support one unlocks on uptie 3.

Now onto how to actually ACTIVATE passives:

To activate them - you need to select said number of 'Sin/Element' skills. This works regardless of their placement.
Activated passives will work for 1 turn only and expire after that.
All passives activate right before the 'battle' phase starts and deactivate after next turn preparation starts... unless their use is something that's simply used once like healing someone obviously.

Let's say you have a passive which requires 2 orange'ish 'DNA' icons. This means that you need 2 Lust skills selected in the chain to activate it. Any will do as long as it's said 'Sin'.

Don't forget that in abno battles you only get 5 coins total, so even in perfect party - the passives which cost '4' will rarely ever work on abno.
This means you ideally want passives which activate often in the party of your choice. A passive simply 'being good' is useless if you hardly ever activate it.

Now there is also one more thing that you might find confusing:
Some passives can say for example:
Envy Res/2 offensive buff stacks.
Res in this case means 'Resonance' - resonance is simply how many of that Sin skill you have chained.

In some rare scenarios there might Abs instead of Res - Abs means absolute resonance and it means that it's instead having 3+ chain of said skills in a row(!!!)
Let's say you have 5 skills chained this way:
Envy > Envy > Lust > Lust > Envy - in this case you simply have 3 Res Envy and 2 lust envy Res.
Envy > Envy > Envy > Lust > Lust - in this case you have BOTH 3 Res and Abs Envy. Also obviously 2 Lust Res too.

Let's use formula above and our example to see what it yields us.
We have 3 Envy skill uses, so 3/2 = 1.5 offensive buff stacks.
BUT game is ALWAYS against the player - so it's rounded down to 1.
If we were to use 4 envy skills - we would get 2 stacks of offensive buff instead.

That should be all you need to know regarding passives/resistances.

Sin List

Just a small list of each 'element/sin' and it's picture until you remember them.
Shouldn't tale long to memorize them.


Wrath



Lust


Sloth


Gluttony



Gloom


Pride


Envy

Uptie 4+offense rebalance notes, temporary section

I didn't yet fully browse everything but from what I have seen, here is what I noticed:

1) Top tier identities are generally still top tier.
Weaker identities USUALLY got better boosts from uptie 4 but there is only 1 identity whom I found breaking through from garbage to top tier.
Ishmael in general got A LOT of love.... from among the most questionable identities to not knowing what to pick.

2) Unlike identities - some EGO got surprisingly HEAVY buffs
Basically upgrading the EGO from single target to AoE.

AoE count is now replaced with 'attack weight' term. Basically each attack weight is +1 target.

Particularly noteworthy EGO:
I will sort them identity by identity, I will likely miss some as a lot are good, but this is more than enough.
Upping EGO is very expensive.

1) 4th match flame of Ryoshu(season 1 free battlepass) - becomes a 3 target AoE with a coin roll of 21+16.
If that was not enough - it now gives +5% damage per 1 burn with a cap of 100%....
Yeah, double damage at 20 burn!

Remember that this is a pretty cheap 6 resource skill... so such extreme power becoming AoE is insane buff.

2) Lifetime Stew of Don
Becomes 3 target AoE
It's the 5 lust resource skill which does up to 50% more damage based on current lust pool...which is usually by far most easy resource to generate in top tier teams.
A huge buff to already strong skill.

3) Telepole of Don
It was already a superb EGO and now it's 3 target AoE for 5 resource cost... no other buffs.

4) Roseate Desire of Hong Lu
Becomes 3 target AoE now. Much more viable and it was already not bad considering the resource cost is 4 lust(easy to get) +2 envy

5) Ebony Stem of Outis is now 7 target AoE..
It's not a big boost most of the time, but is even bettert in some situations.

6) Lantern of Gregor - becomes a 3 target AoE.
Gregor already has great AoE but this is a 60% HP steal... this SHOULD heal him to full HP from nearly zero in majority of the cases when you target it well.

Out of top tier identities I would leave this commentary for now:

The ones I am mostly satisfied with.

R Heath - he has highest possible offense of +5
Only gets +3 ammo as uptie 4, which extends his use by at least 1 skill activation.
Was very powerful already and I think this is fair to him, but generally a weak boost.

N Faust - 5 nails on already powerful skill 2 AND +70% damage potential that's not too hard to fulfill on last coin of skill 3 on an already powerful identity? We will take that.
Her offense is a tiny bit on the low side of +2 but it's okay.
I would say massive boost, super high priority.

Kuro Ryoshu- you know how it sucked when you got high bleed count but enemy does nothing and hence they do nothing? Well now Kuro Ryoshu will deal 20 to 40% more damage in such situations... and generally it's not too hard to get her damage boosts working on at least skill 1/2 with just N faust + kuro ryoshu + kuro lu
Also inflicts 2 more bleed count with skill 2 now without a need for RNG.
Has +3 offense
I would say very solid boost. A bit hard to fulfill but N faust being even better at nails now helps.

W Don - a +3 offense level is quite solid.
Her buffs are towards skill 1/2 when having charge without consuming it.
I would say quite solid as it makes her less of a 'one trick' and more reliable for general purpose when you don't get lucky with skill 3 at correct time.
For an already powerful identity it's a solid boost.

Kuro Lu - skill 1/3 are not AS garbage now.... the offense he got is not too terrible for a relatively bulky 2 star unit - a +0, the gap with other characters overall narrowed so I would say that's an indirect buff to him.
For the most powerful general purpose identity in the game - I would say he got very solid power boost.

TT Hong Lu
+3 offense is kinda good but not super impressive.
He was one trick identity out of top tier ones.
He didn't get much improvement on his trick sadly.
BUT his skill 1 is now up to par with other good skill 1s getting +2 coin power for a potential 13 power instead of 11.
Skill 2 now deals 20% more damage if target has 7+ bleed...
Considering that his skill 2 is pretty powerful move I would say it's a good boost but it's not too impressive.
His skill 3 got a boost which is very hard to make use of.
Overall he is still as debatable as he was compared to Kuro Lu BUT his skill 1 boosted power makes him a very solid overall clasher now.

Liu Ishmael - was already great identity.
Offense +2 is kinda low but tolerable.
All her skills are even better if you can fulfill her burn requirements. And burn requirement is kinda easy to fulfill since she can easily upkeep the count herself so other identities only need to help with potency.
Main problem is now contending with the R ishmael powerhouse.

Shi Ishmael - was already a superb 2 star character and the buff to her is HUGE.
Her poise build up is now even larger and her skill 3 is now top tier.
Very strong stats for a 2 star too - +1 offense while being quite bulky.
Main problem is now contending with R Ishmael powerhouse.

The one I am mostly disappointed at:

7 Outis - got literally nearly nothing and is kinda weak at +0 offense... her clash advantage is kinda mostly lost with how meh her offense is and how her skills didn't get any extra power while already being just barely okay.

G gregor - relies too much on rupture which requires too much of a dedicated party... simply not suitable since there aren't enough GOOD identities to make it viable.
He did get maximum offense of +5 so there is that. Becomes absurdly powerful if rupture team ever becomes a thing... but as is - a 5 rupture count requirement is just night unrealistic to fulfill.

Spicy Yi - he is still a top tier identity, the reason I am disappointed is that out of all things he could get... they kept his freaking skill 1 at 3+2x3 for a pitiful 9 power total.
Mostly got minor/hard to fulfill buffs from the uptie 4.

New interesting Identities who got buffed enough to IMO become top tier:
R Ishmael - her skill 1 is now up to 14 total power.
Her skill 2 is now up to 18 total power
Her skill 3 is now up to up to 26 total power.
Her charge generation got massive buffs and now you are pretty much guaranteed to be able to cast skill 3 on turn 3 with no downsides. After that you can likely cast it whenever it comes up.
Her offense level is a bit low at +1 but this amount of total clash power more than makes up for it.

Pairs quite well with Spicy Yi who is also sinking based.

R Ishmael on uptie 4 goes literally from 0 to hero... she is now about useful as R heath is for general purpose now.


And... that's pretty much it. Some identities got HUGE buffs like blade Yi.... but they STILL SUCK.

I would maybe give a mention to 7 Ryoshu who is pretty top tier slash damage alternative to the pierce of kuro ryoshu...
For being a 2star she got solid buffs while already being quite powerful. Certainly among strongest 2 stars.

[Hentaika]

Downloading the thing for so long kinda made me think that I am just not enjoying the game anymore... I think I will stop the game/guide at this point.

Too much grind, too many huge downloads, And just generally not much to show for it. I think I will login once per half a year or so to play story and that's it, so good luck to you guys!

[Hentaika]

Still 30% of the insane 6 GB update.... with my slow internet it's taking a lot of time

[Ekimmak]

So, before you can say anything and give me thoughts, my own thoughts on new ID.

Molar Sinclair looks quite bad. At Uptie IV, you need to hit Skill 2 twice for his skill 1 to be passable. It doesn't become a superior skill 1, it's going from "bad" to "on par with the others". Meanwhile, Skill 3 punishes you for using it when you don't have 10 tremor count, so it's acting like a charge mechanic that certain enemies can use against you.

Molar Ishmael looks slightly below par, but she's great at killing the gloom-weak, pierce-weak crabs, and that's what she's going to be doing for the next two weeks. The sinking is decent for what we're doing: fighting enemies with no SP gauge, and so it converts into gloom damage, which they're weak against.

[Hentaika]

Yup, quite shitty boost in such case.

[Ekimmak]

According to the update, the extra effect on Bodysack was miswritten, the extra strength is supposed to from "On Kill"

[Ekimmak]

Offhand note on new banner: she'd have been great in this new metagame... if only her EGO had stayed the same. I recall at one point that she'd get a speed boost based on abs lust resonance, which could pair up well with already present speed boosts to let her reach those unreasonable requirements, but not any more.

[Ekimmak]

I like how it seems all the defensive skills now have sins tied to them, so it doesn't feel like you're gimping your resource generation for using them.
Granted, you probably still need someone to try and hit them for it to count, but it's a nice little thing.

I actually think EGO Sinclair has been a bit screwed over, because it might be very hard for him to avoid reaching that +6 talisman when only one skill can remove them. Unless the health depletion was never that bad and I just wasn't looking properly?

[Hentaika]

Added an extra temporary section for uptie 4 insight to the guide.

TLDR: Ishmael got a lot of love, top tier identities didn't change aside of Ishmael IMO.
A lot of EGO got AoE from single target which is absolutely massive.

[Hentaika]

Yeah, might give it a week even just in case they need the time to feel the backlash if things remain as is.

[󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡󠀡Marc🦈]

Maybe give PM a day or two... maybe they'll make some changes.