#this week on 'rate up is a lie': I get punished for my hubris :)

[murasaki-murasame]

After doing way too many summons on this gala without getting Gala Elly I’m just gonna quit while I’m ahead and start hoarding for the New Years banner, lol. And in the mean-time I’ll probably be skipping the Christmas banner so that kinda sucks but oh well.

Either way, I still got a whole bunch of new stuff in my gala summons, and also I have a lot of thoughts about the new This Month in DL post, so I’ll just put the rest of my thoughts under the cut.

I swear to god this gala was the most summons I’ve done on a banner without getting a focus unit, lmao. This must be punishment for me getting like three copies of Gala Euden last time. I think I did like 250 summons total, which included over 10 5-stars, but no Gala Elly. I may or may not end up caving to my temptations and grinding adventurer stories and hard mode campaign levels to try and summon more, but I should just quit while I’m ahead.

Either way, my haul of 5-stars, new and dupes, is:

-Gala Ranzal

-Wedding Elly

-Xanfried

-Lea

-Jeanne

-Chthonius

-Dupes of B-Zardin, Victor,  Sylas, Cassandra, Gala Sarisse, Shinobi, Vayu, and Long Long [x2]. I also got another dupe Shinobi from the 5-star dragon voucher thing they just gave us.

Let’s just say that I don’t know how to feel about wanting Gala Elly and then getting Gala Ranzal + Wedding Elly, lmao. At least they’re both new units for me. Though it feels doubly bad that I got Gala Ranzal, 45MC’d him, and then almost immediately afterward I got Wedding Elly. Welp. I’m a Noelle main in eHMC anyway so it’s not a huge deal. But it’s nice to get my wind roster fleshed out more.

I’m honestly really happy about getting Xanfried, and it more or less makes up for not getting Gala Elly. He was one of those 5-stars who I was vaguely tempted to dream summon because it was bugging me that I still didn’t have him. Now I think the only launch 5-star I don’t have is Hildegarde.

I’m also happy about getting Lea, even if she isn’t a great unit and I have like six other flame swords. I really like her whole design aesthetic.

I don’t really care much about the new 5-star dragons I got, but they’re nice to have. The Long Long dupes are nice, though, since now I have a nearly MUB one for my Lin You.

Oh and I got regular Aeleen as well, and she was the last non-limited 4-star I needed to get, so that’s cool.

We’ve known about the next banner for a while because of datamines, but either way, I feel a little bit salty that the new 5-star is literally just Thaniel But Better [tm], lol. If it weren’t for the fact that Chocolatiers is a limited print, I’d say that she wouldn’t even be worth it when Thaniel’s a more accessible option who works just fine in HBH because the whole fight is literally tuned around his kit since until now he’s been the only real healer for it. I hope this doesn’t lead to people acting like Thaniel’s not good enough for eHBH anymore once Jiang Ziya comes out. I’ve invested way too much into him to switch. I did recently craft the HDT water spear, and I can use my H-Maritimus on Elly if I want to use her in eHBH, but I still want to stick to Thaniel.

And on that note my H-Maritimus is at 2UB, and between the sunlight stone we’ll get soon from the Megaman event, and the dragons I have at nearly max bond level, he’ll probably be MUB soon, which should push my Thaniel above 7k might, which will be great. He’s currently at about 6,850 might, between him having +200 augments, Chocolatiers at +190 augments, a MUB HDT1 water staff, etc etc. And we’re gonna be getting the Christmas event facility again soon so that’ll boost him up even further.

Also I’m really not interested in the new dragon since he’s just water Hastur and I don’t care about that at all, lol. Durant seems cool but I already have a 50MC Natalie, and he’s a 4-star so he’d be easy enough to get off-banner anyway.

I’m gonna probably skip the Christmas banner since I went all in on this gala and I want to save for the New Years banner. And since it looks like the Christmas banner will be in just a week or so, I won’t exactly have many resources saved up by that point anyway. I’m not really interested in any of the existing Christmas alts, though, so it’d probably be an easy skip anyway, unless the new ones really interest me.

I hope that them doing the Christmas rerun stuff earlier in the month than I expected means we might get a Christmas-themed raid event afterward, but I won’t get my hopes up. I think we’re due for a new raid event anyway, but that’ll probably be what the New Years event is anyway, I guess.

I’m curious to see how they handle the New Years stuff, since it’d feel weird to rerun the Ieyasu event/banner, with how that was themed around the current zodiac year. I think we’ll just get a new event with new units, and probably a new welfare unit along with the event itself. With how good Ieyasu was [and how salty I still am about not having him], I think it’ll be worth saving for that.

Though considering that the next story chapter is gonna apparently be Luca-focused, I’m guessing the January gala unit will be Gala Luca, who I’d be extremely interested in, so that’s another thing to worry about saving for, lol.

And on that note we’re getting Chapter 11 in about two weeks, and even though we got more or less the same teaser description for it as last time, we at least have a better look at the two new android characters. Even though they’re gonna be antagonists I still kinda hope we can get them as playable units some day.

We also got more info on the new endgame boss mode, and even though I still want more specific details about it, my current guess is that it’s basically going to be High IO. It’ll probably be themed around there being new android military squads to fight against, with the new bosses being their leaders or whatever. It’d be fun to get some genuinely difficult wave-based content, but it’d also be great if it means we can get facility upgrade materials a lot faster.

The reveal of the new mode being called The Agito Uprising also more or less confirms that rumour that’s been going around for a while, which also talked about how the Christmas banner would include a new Christmas Phoenix alt, that the new endgame bosses would drop 6-star weapons, that we’ll get a Monster Hunter collab in February, and that Mikoto, Ezelith, Naveed, and Xanfried will be at least some of the first units to get their sixth mana circle upgrades.

I’m honestly kinda happy to hear about Christmas Phoenix since that makes it more likely that the Christmas banner will be an easy skip for me, lmao. But anyway, I really wouldn’t be surprised to see the Agito Uprising bosses dropping weapons that are roughly between 5t3s and HDT weapons in power. we really need something like that to ease the transition into the eHDT cycle. I’ve basically given up on getting into eHJP/eHZD until something along those lines happens to make them more accessible, lol.

I still have a lot of questions about how the whole sixth mana circle upgrade thing will work, and sadly this didn’t really tell us anything new, but they at least said that they’re aware of how limited the pool of units used in endgame content is, and that they’ll try and make changes to make more units viable for that, so that’ll probably be the main point of the sixth mana circles. I have a feeling that only 5-star units will end up getting them, which would kinda suck. There’s a lot of 5-stars who need an upgrade, but there’s also a lot of other units who need an upgrade too.

They did mention that they’ll be doing something with 3-star units in general, though, so I’m really curious about that. I really really want them to rebalance 3-star units so that they all have 100% on-element status resistances. I could take or leave anything else, but they really need that sort of buff. There’s no real point to holding back a unit by giving them incomplete or off-element status resistances. Which also applies to welfare 4-stars. For example, my Xania would be way more viable in eHMS if she can get to 100% stun res without needing a print, and it’d just be great in general if Vixel could get an actually relevant status resistance for his element. I have a feeling they won’t change anything else about their kits, but even just that’d be nice.

My realistic prediction for what the sixth mana circle upgrades will actually include is that it’ll more or less just be more of what we already have with the current ones. It’ll probably just be a few flat stat upgrades, maybe some more coability node upgrades, and one or two upgrades to the skills/abilities of each unit. At the very least I think that units will get a third upgrade to their S2, since those only go up to two upgrade tiers whereas every unit gets three tiers to their S1. And there’s a lot they could do to improve units by buffing and adding stuff to their S2s. For example, Thaniel would really benefit from getting a regen heal added to his S2, but Jiang Ziya existing makes me think they’re just forgetting about Thaniel for good. I can’t really think of what they could do with any of the 5-stars, though. It’s possible but less likely that some units might also get upgrades to one of their abilities, but that’s a bit more uncertain than them getting skill upgrades, if only because there’s a lot of ability types that you just can’t upgrade at all, like 100% status resistance or skill prep abilities.

It’d be really nice if they changed the second ability of 3-stars to 100% status resistance and gave them something entirely new for their third ability, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they just buff the 25% status resistance abilities of those units to 50% status resistance.

Also, we got more details about how we’re getting higher-level void battles added, and higher difficulties added to the void dragons, which I think is a necessary addition in order to help bridge the gap toward endgame content. As it is now, void battles aren’t really worth doing outside of endeavors. But it’s also nice that they’ve added augments to the void dragons and stuff.

In general they’d been making a lot of steps toward easing the progression toward endgame content, especially with the other changes they made to Avenue to Fortune, and them also adding augments to HDT drops. It’s nice that they’re aware of the issue of how steep the progression curve is right now, but it also really makes it clear that it’s a genuine problem that they’re currently being stuck trying to fix. I don’t really blame them for it, though. These things happen with games like this. I’m just glad that they’re actually addressing it instead of leaving it unchanged.

It’ll sadly take a while for them to add all of the new void bosses on the same tier as the Volcanic Chimera, but it’ll be nice to eventually have more accessible options to get into other eHDTs and stuff.

Anyway a whole bunch has been going on lately and I think it’s on a good track. Honestly my biggest issue right now is that since they changed the UI I keep clicking the wrong buttons when I’m trying to go between menus, lmao.

Oh and yeah the Megaman event is a thing that’s happening. There’s really not a lot to say about it because it’s so barebones and gameplay-focused, but it’s fun, and I like how much they’re leaning into the aesthetic of it. Megaman himself is a really goddamn weird unit, though. I like how much he’s apparently designed to play like he’s in an actual Megaman game, but it’s a weird playstyle to get used to for this game. And I still prefer Xania as a flame wand, lol.

#dragalia lost #this week on 'rate up is a lie': I get punished for my hubris :)