Blue Archive - The south Korean Gacha game that almost died, is now being released on Steam this summer.

[Kivotos strongest Sensei]

What? Did the Hasumi event give you enough mats to 3* weapon her immediately!?

Yeah lol, you get all the mats required to max her out, something like 600 elephs.

 

[Faceless Anime Woman]

The whole thing with Hasumi's event is started as a bug or dev's fuckup that caused everyone during the event's first run to essentially got that amount of eleph to max her up and get her 5* weapon. The devs decided to keep it in even on rerun and the permanent version, making it so that everyone can get their first 5* weapon through that Hasumi.

Speaking about event, dont forget to do one last farm or clearing the Codebox event if able. There's only a couple of hours left and missing out all those rewards (and free Karin) can be a regretful experience.

 

[Overpriced Gaming Chair]

Against my better judgement I decided to downloaded this and I'm lost just looking at the main menu, just like that anime horse game I tried recently too. Is all gacha slop now this convoluted and impenetrable? This is unplayable, they dump too much on you at once. I'm getting too old for this shit.

I am now scared YuYu Hakusho: Slugfest will be this way...

I had similar experience - the game throws a LOT at you and handholds you through many obvious things. Something important can get "lost in the sauce" as you frantically click to let the game play it. My personal example (previously on this thread) was that you can aim the AOE abilities by dragging without clicking, I initially just thought you can only click and hope for the best.

Here's some other keynotes based on playing the Steam release since it launched:
-Clear missions as far as you can go for XP and other rewards
-Winning battles only gives you XP for the account level, you have to level up characters manually in their stat screen
-Story volumes give you the Premium currency and certain other rewards, including base/welfare characters (IIRC)
-Clearing story volumes is mostly reading (technically you can simply enable Auto-mode and not bother with text at all but the Visual Novel parts are unironically the best selling point this game has.)
-You need to spend your Energy without mindlessly spending it, repeatable activities are often ranked based on their XP/Energy ratio.
-Daily grind is to "Multi-Sweep" mission you've already cleared manually - basically the pretence of game play is dropped and you just exchange energy for repeatable rewards, including XP.

People who played before the Steam release say that this game is surprisingly F2P friendly. Well, at least by gachaslop standards. If you want to just experience the story, there is no paywall whatsoever for it (AFAIK.) However it's annoying when suddenly your progress is blocked by a combat encounter with a recommended level 57. To use a crude analogy, imagine reading a book and being invested at the narrative. Then someone grabs the book and demands you spend X hours levelling your World of Warcraft character before they give the book back to you.

 

[Kivotos strongest Sensei]

Whoever thought it would be a good idea to run a 3X Commission reward week and the New Year rerun and a Valentines at the same time needs to be hanged by his testicles.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I see a timelimit on my 10 pull cards? Is it just before they reset the pity? Or will the cards be pointless so might as well use them now?

 

[Kivotos strongest Sensei]

I see a timelimit on my 10 pull cards? Is it just before they reset the pity? Or will the cards be pointless so might as well use them now?

Generally in the recruit screen it will show you how many days are left for you to use the card and you can use it on other banners, though it's best if you post a screenshot to be sure.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

View attachment 7676712
Whoever thought it would be a good idea to run a 3X Commission reward week and the New Year rerun and a Valentines at the same time needs to be hanged by his testicles.

They want to shift the delay between JP and Global from 6 to 3 months ASAP so they're now putting events that are for dead weeks, like Tree of Sephiroth or the Valentine's event, into weeks with actual events. They did the same back when they shifted the delay from a year to 9 months, and then from 9 months to 6. I've seen that the next Fest will already be in the first week of January, when it should've been at the end of January. That's why shit like this happens.

 

[Kivotos strongest Sensei]

I've seen that the next Fest will already be in the first week of January, when it should've been at the end of January. That's why shit like this happens.

That's catastrophic. Eventually when it catches up to JP, we will have weeks if not a month of no content to play.

 

[Fatsuit Shinji]

The whole thing with Hasumi's event is started as a bug or dev's fuckup that caused everyone during the event's first run to essentially got that amount of eleph to max her up and get her 5* weapon. The devs decided to keep it in even on rerun and the permanent version, making it so that everyone can get their first 5* weapon through that Hasumi.

Devs fucked up on not doing a background check on the person who was the in game vtuber for Hasumi's event. Korean BA players recognized her voice as another vtuber who caused quite some on and offline trouble. Once informed the devs dropped her and scrapped the event entirely. In addition to apologizing to the players, gave all of them the elephs and mats to max out Track Hasumi. Months later devs went back to doing vtuber models, this time with BA characters most notably Arona and later Plana.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

The new update looks pretty crazy. Time to grind pyros!

Commission SUCKS BY THE WAY! I rather waste energy doing something else

 

[Faceless Anime Woman]

Devs fucked up on not doing a background check on the person who was the in game vtuber for Hasumi's event. Korean BA players recognized her voice as another vtuber who caused quite some on and offline trouble. Once informed the devs dropped her and scrapped the event entirely. In addition to apologizing to the players, gave all of them the elephs and mats to max out Track Hasumi. Months later devs went back to doing vtuber models, this time with BA characters most notably Arona and later Plana.

Eh? I thought the vtuber thing was way before Track Hasumi's event?

 

[Kivotos strongest Sensei]

Commission SUCKS BY THE WAY! I rather waste energy doing something else

I don't like them either, but there are very few sources of Activity Reports. This is how many you need to get a character to level 90.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

I don't like them either, but there are very few sources of Activity Reports. This is how many you need to get a character to level 90.
View attachment 7676908

To add to that, only the first one is worth doing due to energy efficiency until you get to the later ones (forgot which one is the first to give yellows and I don't feel like opening the game). And only during commission rate up campaigns.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Generally in the recruit screen it will show you how many days are left for you to use the card and you can use it on other banners, though it's best if you post a screenshot to be sure.

Would be pretty bullshit if I should have used it for the Fest rather than hoard it for a character I want

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Would be pretty bullshit if I should have used it for the Fest rather than hoard it for a character I want
View attachment 7677575

Huh that's honestly pretty weird, usually the standard 1 and 10 free tickets are imperishable, only the ones that you paypig for have an expiry date.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Huh that's honestly pretty weird, usually the standard 1 and 10 free tickets are imperishable, only the ones that you paypig for have an expiry date.

Thanks, those are probably the ones from the choice banner. Btw, can you have multiple versions of the same character on a team?

 

[Kivotos strongest Sensei]

can you have multiple versions of the same character on a team?

Yeah, I generally run Hina and S. Hina together when I need to clear large red waves.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Thanks, those are probably the ones from the choice banner. Btw, can you have multiple versions of the same character on a team?

You sure can, if you for example want regular Neru and school uniform Neru on the same team there's nothing prohibiting you from doing it. The two exceptions are the cafe, where you can have only one character version in the cafe(s) at the same time, and the current valentine's event, where you can only pick one version of a character to give chocolate to. The exception to the exception is Kuroko aka Shiroko Terror, as she is a different dimension version of the rok.

 

[GratsTheat783]

Should I save up my crystals for events or spend them as soon as I get them? Got over 8000 right now.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Oh yeah, since there's a lot of newbies I wanted to do a short little writeup about the free students aka welfares you get from the event recaps. It will help you prioritize some of them in case there's a gap you need filling urgently in your roster. The events in the recaps are the ones that will most likely never see a rerun again, that's why they're put there, so new players don't miss out on the story or the welfare characters, though there is one point of unfairness in that when those events actually ran you got enough elephs to star up the welfares to 3*, while now it's just to 2* (exception is of course Track Hasumi but that's been discussed to fucking death already). I'll also explain some new terminology. They're in chronological order:

Spoiler: Autism

Nodoka: Sadly, she sucks. She is the best accuracy buffer in the game but there is no content that requires that yet, accuracy is important in PvP but you want to bring characters that have naturally high Acc anyway, not to mention it's all RNG so her AoE EX that buffs accuracy could hit just your tank which would be a complete waste.

Swimsuit Tsurugi: Decent. A high damage pseudo-tank like regular Tsurugi. She loses her ability to sustain herself but gears her kit more towards pure damage, with her EX buffing her damage output. She often punches way above her weight and is similar to Serika in that way. If you're missing some blues she's a great auto-attacker for a welfare. (Auto-attackers are characters who need very little micro, they have an EX that substantially buffs themselves, and their basic skill does a lot of damage to one enemy)

Swimsuit Izumi: Ok. Her kit is not impressive but her EX can stun up to 5 enemies which is very useful in situations where you want to avoid an enemy's special attack, that's of course if they can be crowd controlled. (Crowd control is any skill that shows up as purple in the status bar, they restrict a character's action in some way, for example a stun makes them unable to act, while for example Kayoko's fear makes them unable to act and they run away).

Tomoe: Very niche. She's only useful if you're specifically running her with Mutsuki to make sure Mutsuki's minefield basic skill doesn't whiff like it usually does but instead does MASSIVE damage, since Tomoe's EX lowers attack range forcing Mutsuki to go to the front in that situation, while also boosting her movement speed, crit % and crit damage.

Fubuki: Good. She's another decent auto-attacker, this time yellow. Her EX takes a loooong time to go into effect since she literally has to eat her donut until it goes online but it's a substantial buff. Her basic skill inflicts a lot of damage and stun, which is why she can be pretty useful, especially for the Hod raid boss who needs to be crowd controlled.

Michiru: Decent. Can stack buffs on herself to do a lot of single target damage with her EX. Her problem is that she's a shotgunner and she really doesn't have enough HP, defense or self-sustainment to be a pseudo-tank like Reisa or Tsurugi.

Swimsuit Ayane: Very good. Virtually a 5th striker auto-attacker at the cost of one special. Unlike most other specials that arrive in a vehicle, her EX that makes her appear in an attack chopper is cheap as fuck while also doing tons of damage. Her only downside is that this is all she has - damage. But DAMN does she do a lot of it, and since her EX has low cost, if you combine her with a low cost yellow team you can basically keep her on the field at all times.

Swimsuit Shizuko: Probably the best welfare student though that's after you build her up a bit, your priority should be getting tracksuit Hasumi. Anyway, she is a very versatile character that can do many things, in most other games a jack-of-all-trades kind of character sucks but in Blue Archive they're often the best ones because their flexibility helps a TON in teambuilding (other examples of that would be Kokona and new year's Fuuka) and swimsuit Shizuko is no exception, imo the best welfare for now. She buffs everyone's attack (have to 3* her for that tho), she buffs your highest crit student with MORE crit damage as her basic skill and her EX repositions and shields but as said earlier she's a special that offers no damage by herself so you need to build her up before she becomes useful, it's well worth it tho.

Cheerleader Hibiki: Insane damage, insanely slow attack speed, her insane damage is from TWO MINUTES of damage over time. That makes her very niche as you need to find situations where someone's gonna sit there for 2 minutes and eat up all that damage.

Track Hasumi: Like regular Hasumi but blue and with a better overall kit. Due to circumstances already explained, you can already 5* and 3* her weapon, that makes her a great crutch character for new accounts because you get a very strong blue damage single target unit, and her rolling EX cost allows for a lot of flexibility. Has the same pitfall as regular Hasumi - big single target damage is all she has so she's a bit of a glass cannon or maybe a better comparison is to say she's as squishy as her boobs.

Maid Yuzu: Good. Especially if you're missing red AoE, maid Yuzu does that job very well, also buffs the entire team's attack once you get her to 3*.

Should I save up my crystals for events or spend them as soon as I get them? Got over 8000 right now.

Always try to save up in increments of 24k. Spark points don't carry over in banners and get turned into crafting items when a banner expires.