State of the game: Star Rail
Sep. 28th, 2023 02:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoFigure I'll add some more commentary for those who don't play the game.
So battle encounters in HSR consist of 4 characters in the team. You usually get enemies in the 3-5 range, with some bosses having the ability to summon 2 additional units.
Some encounters can involve 2-3 waves of mobs (meaning you clear the first group, and immediately the next wave shows up without giving you the time to regroup and use out of combat food/techniques). Farming points can let you pick how many waves to fight, up to 6, but those are easy fights can can be left on autobattle.
Enemy mobs tend to have 2-3 elemental weaknesses. When you attack with a character of a particular element against an elementally weak mob, you lower their break bar and do more damage than other elements do. When the break bar is depleted, an extra effect occurs, such as additional damage for fire/wind/lightning, delaying the mob's next action for ice/quantum/imaginary.
So for most battles, you want to have 1-2 main attackers, 1-2 buff/debuffers, 1 sustain (healer/shielder), and ideally you want the main attacker to match the elemental weakness of the majority of your enemies, or the main boss.
Some 5-star damagers (such as Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae) are buff enough they can do well enough in fights even when the enemy boss isn't weak to his element. Unfortunately, I only have 1 such character.
My other 5-star damager is Yanqing, from the standard banner. Unfortunately, while he does a lot of single target damage in ideal situations, said ideal situation can be very conditional (cannot take any enemy damage), and so he needs a lot of support. And unfortunately I don't have his ideal support character, which is a 5-star shielder, Gepard.
The end game content is Memory of Chaos and Simulated Universe: Swarm Disaster.
MoC requires you to have two teams setup at the beginning. Each team then gets to fight two encounters. And then you have to defeat the enemy within a certain number of turns to count for full marks. I can do one side well enough with DHIL + any healer + most support combo. The otherside is still a work of progress because YQ isn't quite as buff.
Simulated Universe you battle through a series of "rooms", gaining blessings (buffs) of various types, and then fight the boss at the end. Swarm disaster bosses are really hard at the higher levels. The buffs, when comboed the right way, though, can also be very OP, such that at that point it almost doesn't matter which characters are doing the battling. But you'd need to be either really lucky to get encounters that give you the best buffs, or you have to be smart about the buffs you pick before getting to the boss. I'm still working my way through the middle difficulty on this one.
And then there is the building of individual characters...
From the surface, to build a character you need the following:
- Levels (max is 80), and your stats increase per level
- Lightcone, which adds stats plus a unique ability/effect. LCs have max level 80 and also can be superimposed up to 5 times (ie. you need extra copies of the same LC and merge them together)
- Traces, which increases the numbers on your attacks, skills, ultimates, and each character also has 3 additional special abilities that can be unlocked, plus some additional stats.
- Eidolon, which you can increase by getting duplicates of the character from the gatcha, adds stats or various additional abilities
- Gear, 4 pieces come from Cavern dungeons, 2 pieces come from normal Simulated Universe. They add additional stats.
So with each patch there are some events and quests and whatnot which will give you some XP books for levels and lightcones. Another good amount comes from the battlepass, though a lot of it needs $. Per patch and counting battlepass, you probably get enough to level up ~2 characters from 1-80.
Though also note that you spend about the same amount to level up from 1-70 as you do from 70-80. So the general recommendation is to level up the damagers first (because their levels matter more when calculating the damage the enemy takes), and the supports can be mostly left at 70 without being too much of a loss.
Traces also require a lot of farming, especially at the higher levels. The general recommendation is to get the ones for skill/talent/ult to level 6-8 depending on how much they're used, ignore basic attacks for supports, and the rest only activate the ones which are important (eg. ignore +damage ones for supports).
Gear is probably the biggest headache. Because the above can all be slowly farmed towards and get a guaranteed upgrade. But gear is completely RNG. The main stat is RNG and the best stats always have the lowest occurrence. And then the substats are also RNG, so you end up having gear with a ATK main stat and all defensive substats, or vice versa, leaving it "unusable". even if you get a base gear with the needed main and some good substats, when you level up the gear, it's random which substat the upgrade will go to. So of course if your unlucky, all the upgrades will go to a useless substat instead of the one you want, leaving the piece "useless".
At my current stage, I have...ok gear with the main stat that I want. Even though many pieces are still using purple gear rather than gold gear because the substat upgrades were better. I am still farming for some gold pieces with the main stat I want, and for pieces with at least 1-2 good substats I want (with upgrades actually going to that substat). This will likely be a long, long, long process.
Now, about my account specifically...
The cornerstones of my "main" team is of course the cute dragonboy Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, and the gentleman healer Luocha. DHIL has very OP damage numbers for up to 3 targets at a time, such that I don't even have to worry about enemy weaknesses a lot of the time. Luocha is the best healer/support in the game right now, and will likely keep the position until the next 5 star healer is released (if then).
The remaining 2 slots go to supports, since I don't need a secondary damager. I generally use Pela (a great debuffer), Yukong (additionally buffs imaginary damage characters, which DHIL and Luocha both are), or Trailblazer (the player viewpoint character and an excellent tank to pull damage away from the much squishier DHIL). In Simulated Universe I also sometimes use Asta (speed and damage buffer) and Tingyun (buffer, charges other characters ultimate). So these supports are the next tier in my characters to level.
Before I had Yanqing (or DHIL), my team damagers were Dan Heng (4 star version), Sushang, and/or Serval as the situation required, so these had been built up as I played the game. At the current point though I'm probably not going to spend too much further on them.
Yanqing himself is at a state where he's...decent enough for my needs, even if that's not the full clear of MOC yet. I don't want to throw further resources down this hole, honestly. Rather wait for the next limited 5 star attack focused character instead.
Also building Fuxuan, the newest 5 star and a semi-shielder support, but haven't played her enough yet to judge her gameplay. (Still need some decent gear...)
As a more long term goal, I also want to build up Bailu, the 5 star healer from the standard banner. It's not important since I have Luocha built and also the 4 star healer Natasha for the 2nd team. But I do want to replace Nat with Bailu eventually, purely because I like Bailu's character. Dragonboy + dragongirl team, yah!
In previous banners, I skipped the ones between Luocha and DHIL, even though both had really good reception and strength. Their in story characters/design just don't grab me; I'm not too into villain protags and I don't find crazy to be hot in a guy... And I am playing this half for the pretties as I am for the gameplay, so yeah.
On that note, while I am not super a fan of Fuxuan's design, I do find her third eye thing interesting (being an Erlang fan, lol) and I don't *dislike* her design. So it's good enough for me to pull.
So battle encounters in HSR consist of 4 characters in the team. You usually get enemies in the 3-5 range, with some bosses having the ability to summon 2 additional units.
Some encounters can involve 2-3 waves of mobs (meaning you clear the first group, and immediately the next wave shows up without giving you the time to regroup and use out of combat food/techniques). Farming points can let you pick how many waves to fight, up to 6, but those are easy fights can can be left on autobattle.
Enemy mobs tend to have 2-3 elemental weaknesses. When you attack with a character of a particular element against an elementally weak mob, you lower their break bar and do more damage than other elements do. When the break bar is depleted, an extra effect occurs, such as additional damage for fire/wind/lightning, delaying the mob's next action for ice/quantum/imaginary.
So for most battles, you want to have 1-2 main attackers, 1-2 buff/debuffers, 1 sustain (healer/shielder), and ideally you want the main attacker to match the elemental weakness of the majority of your enemies, or the main boss.
Some 5-star damagers (such as Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae) are buff enough they can do well enough in fights even when the enemy boss isn't weak to his element. Unfortunately, I only have 1 such character.
My other 5-star damager is Yanqing, from the standard banner. Unfortunately, while he does a lot of single target damage in ideal situations, said ideal situation can be very conditional (cannot take any enemy damage), and so he needs a lot of support. And unfortunately I don't have his ideal support character, which is a 5-star shielder, Gepard.
The end game content is Memory of Chaos and Simulated Universe: Swarm Disaster.
MoC requires you to have two teams setup at the beginning. Each team then gets to fight two encounters. And then you have to defeat the enemy within a certain number of turns to count for full marks. I can do one side well enough with DHIL + any healer + most support combo. The otherside is still a work of progress because YQ isn't quite as buff.
Simulated Universe you battle through a series of "rooms", gaining blessings (buffs) of various types, and then fight the boss at the end. Swarm disaster bosses are really hard at the higher levels. The buffs, when comboed the right way, though, can also be very OP, such that at that point it almost doesn't matter which characters are doing the battling. But you'd need to be either really lucky to get encounters that give you the best buffs, or you have to be smart about the buffs you pick before getting to the boss. I'm still working my way through the middle difficulty on this one.
And then there is the building of individual characters...
From the surface, to build a character you need the following:
- Levels (max is 80), and your stats increase per level
- Lightcone, which adds stats plus a unique ability/effect. LCs have max level 80 and also can be superimposed up to 5 times (ie. you need extra copies of the same LC and merge them together)
- Traces, which increases the numbers on your attacks, skills, ultimates, and each character also has 3 additional special abilities that can be unlocked, plus some additional stats.
- Eidolon, which you can increase by getting duplicates of the character from the gatcha, adds stats or various additional abilities
- Gear, 4 pieces come from Cavern dungeons, 2 pieces come from normal Simulated Universe. They add additional stats.
So with each patch there are some events and quests and whatnot which will give you some XP books for levels and lightcones. Another good amount comes from the battlepass, though a lot of it needs $. Per patch and counting battlepass, you probably get enough to level up ~2 characters from 1-80.
Though also note that you spend about the same amount to level up from 1-70 as you do from 70-80. So the general recommendation is to level up the damagers first (because their levels matter more when calculating the damage the enemy takes), and the supports can be mostly left at 70 without being too much of a loss.
Traces also require a lot of farming, especially at the higher levels. The general recommendation is to get the ones for skill/talent/ult to level 6-8 depending on how much they're used, ignore basic attacks for supports, and the rest only activate the ones which are important (eg. ignore +damage ones for supports).
Gear is probably the biggest headache. Because the above can all be slowly farmed towards and get a guaranteed upgrade. But gear is completely RNG. The main stat is RNG and the best stats always have the lowest occurrence. And then the substats are also RNG, so you end up having gear with a ATK main stat and all defensive substats, or vice versa, leaving it "unusable". even if you get a base gear with the needed main and some good substats, when you level up the gear, it's random which substat the upgrade will go to. So of course if your unlucky, all the upgrades will go to a useless substat instead of the one you want, leaving the piece "useless".
At my current stage, I have...ok gear with the main stat that I want. Even though many pieces are still using purple gear rather than gold gear because the substat upgrades were better. I am still farming for some gold pieces with the main stat I want, and for pieces with at least 1-2 good substats I want (with upgrades actually going to that substat). This will likely be a long, long, long process.
Now, about my account specifically...
The cornerstones of my "main" team is of course the cute dragonboy Dan Heng Imbibitor Lunae, and the gentleman healer Luocha. DHIL has very OP damage numbers for up to 3 targets at a time, such that I don't even have to worry about enemy weaknesses a lot of the time. Luocha is the best healer/support in the game right now, and will likely keep the position until the next 5 star healer is released (if then).
The remaining 2 slots go to supports, since I don't need a secondary damager. I generally use Pela (a great debuffer), Yukong (additionally buffs imaginary damage characters, which DHIL and Luocha both are), or Trailblazer (the player viewpoint character and an excellent tank to pull damage away from the much squishier DHIL). In Simulated Universe I also sometimes use Asta (speed and damage buffer) and Tingyun (buffer, charges other characters ultimate). So these supports are the next tier in my characters to level.
Before I had Yanqing (or DHIL), my team damagers were Dan Heng (4 star version), Sushang, and/or Serval as the situation required, so these had been built up as I played the game. At the current point though I'm probably not going to spend too much further on them.
Yanqing himself is at a state where he's...decent enough for my needs, even if that's not the full clear of MOC yet. I don't want to throw further resources down this hole, honestly. Rather wait for the next limited 5 star attack focused character instead.
Also building Fuxuan, the newest 5 star and a semi-shielder support, but haven't played her enough yet to judge her gameplay. (Still need some decent gear...)
As a more long term goal, I also want to build up Bailu, the 5 star healer from the standard banner. It's not important since I have Luocha built and also the 4 star healer Natasha for the 2nd team. But I do want to replace Nat with Bailu eventually, purely because I like Bailu's character. Dragonboy + dragongirl team, yah!
In previous banners, I skipped the ones between Luocha and DHIL, even though both had really good reception and strength. Their in story characters/design just don't grab me; I'm not too into villain protags and I don't find crazy to be hot in a guy... And I am playing this half for the pretties as I am for the gameplay, so yeah.
On that note, while I am not super a fan of Fuxuan's design, I do find her third eye thing interesting (being an Erlang fan, lol) and I don't *dislike* her design. So it's good enough for me to pull.
