#hsr endgame recap

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.5.1 AS, 2.5.1 PF, & 2.5.2 MoC Recaps

Hello there, the time for yapping is here once again! Since only the same eight or so people tend to read these, I don't think we need a wall of disclaimers this time around. Going forward you should really only expect to see them when I’ve implemented formatting changes or have something important to mention that pertains to the entirety of the recap post.

2.4 turned me into a slightly casual gamer: dedicated subsections for my casual gaming activities have been added to minimize some of the reintroduction redundancy that was happening in the last recap.

As always, apologies for the image distortion: long photos and Tumblr do not mix well.

You know the drill, lengthy rambling about my endgame experience is under the cut!

2.5.1 Apocalyptic Shadow

Gamer's Instigation is probably my favorite endgame title out of all the ones we've had so far (let's go, gamers!) I'm a big fan of AS, as we know, and this cycle's challenge did not disappoint. I got my twelve stars within a total of four challenge waves!

I tried my hardest to avoid resetting in my first run of stage IV, but even after doing stage III and rereading the enemy details I still needed to feel out Phantylia's mechanics to get a better grasp on the best way to defeat her efficiently. Aventurine's battle was rather cut and dry, so his side only took one attempt.

Aventurines battle was also quite fun. Imagine if his normal boss mechanics allowed for a cumulative dice score across your teammates (the energy buff would probably have to be RNG-based or default to the teammate that contributed the most points in order to counterbalance that), but it would make for a much more enjoyable time when fighting him. It’s been months and I'm still salty about the White Night Chronicles MoC XII—there simply was no reason for that to have been as difficult as it was for me back then. I just…

Anyway, here are the builds I used for IV-I:

Phantylia's battle wasn’t hard, it just required a bit more focus and planning to complete. I did my run with a sustain because I misunderstood the HP situation for defeating the flowers; I interpreted it as the flowers would restore Phantylia’s HP after popping, rather than restoring my team’s HP. In hindsight I shouldn’t have understood it that way because that’s not how the flowers work in her Echo of War, but for some reason that didn’t click at the time. Either way, I got it done with relative ease which is all I’m really asking for these days.

These are the builds I used in IV-II:

Pretend you didn't see Aventurine's sphere—there simply was no better choice. It is what it is, and I will not be addressing it further.

The first 800 jades down (whoop whoop!) I desperately needed them because Feixiao bankrupted me on her way to my roster. It’s my penance for betraying Danny boy.

AS Casual Gaming

AS is way too fun for me not to drop back into it over the course of the patch. I tend to get inspired by runs that I’ve seen on Discord and end up motivated enough to try for better clears and/or test out different teams. This is where I’ll be dropping my ramblings about those attempts. Unfortunately, due to image limitations, I won’t be able to include any build showcases in this section. I did consider making a secondary post specifically for this reason but ultimately decided that it wasn’t a big enough deal to be necessary (if I’m wrong about that, please do let me know. I’m down to yap for as long as y’all are down to listen.)

Chasing a better clear with my original team lineup:

Popped back into the game about four hours after my first round of attempts to start the process of trying for a better clear. The last time I was score chasing in AS I kept a close track of my reset count since it was over the course of a few days, and I kept switching back and forth between my phone and pc. This time I stuck to one day and one device so the detailing is a bit less extensive.

Even though I’ve used DHIL in basically every endgame cycle, I still manage to fumble his gameplay from time to time, my first round of tries being a prime example of that. With that in mind, I figured that taking on Phantylia’s side would be my best shot at increasing my overall score. I set my sights on a 100 point increase and went to town.

First three resets: +66 points, bringing me up to 7260

Next two resets: +4 more points, bringing me up to 7264

Final five resets: no points, DHIL managed to die twice—don’t ask me how that happened because I genuinely do not know

70 points of improvement on the second side. I don’t know if 100 overall points is within reach, but I’ll refocus my efforts on Aventurine’s battle and see what, if anything, can be done there.

First and only three resets: no points, I was hoping that there was a work around with the weakness-locked dice but there wasn’t

Barring making my entire team even faster to get more turns, which I don’t have the relics to do at the moment, this appears to be the end of the line for this clear.

Not a bad set of attempts overall. I was able to get my score up to a grand total of 7264 points within thirteen resets. That’s 138 more points than last AS—didn’t see that happening if I’m being completely honest, some of my builds have actually gotten worse since then. Either way, I’m happy enough with this score to forgo attempting a sustainless clear. Let’s be so for real, my account is not currently in the place to even humor sustainless clears. I’ll file that thought away for later down the line.

Getting Jingliu's Revenge:

Remember a little earlier when I said I was still salty about my experience with White Night Chronicles? Well, since I wasn't having the best of days, I decided to head back into AS so I could feel vindication in the form of beating up Aventurine.

Now, you may be thinking, "TJ, you've already gotten your revenge on Aventurine with Boothill like three times since then." To which I would say yes. However, pew-pew gaming him to death just isn't enough to quell the insatiable beast that is my pettiness for this situation. That being said, I called upon my slightly benched, 35% crit rate having Jingliu to finally enact my revenge; the fact that it's been over five months and I still haven't been able to get Jingliu to 50% crate is actually so painful. I had a whole arc where I was farming wind set Pela and did not manage to get a single replacement piece for Jingliu that entire time. I hate that I love this game.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I regeared Jingliu, rallied the troops (Bronya, RM, & Natasha), and set out for battle:

Victory is MINE! 3608 points is pretty damn solid—my Boothill team only managed to get 73 more points during their run. I feel like I can finally move on from this without any lingering resentment or regrets (yippee!)

Closing Thoughts

That just about wraps up AS for this patch. I was wrong with my guess of having to beat up Yanqing this cycle (a well-deserved break after the 2.5 continuance) but I do hope to see him in this mode sometime in the future. I’m looking forward to seeing what all they manage to incorporate into AS after this patch because the new boss mechanics were both refreshing and interesting. I’m someone who actively likes this mode, so I can only imagine how much of an impact the new features had on those who don’t typically care for it. I hope that they continue to mix up more battles like this in the future.

2.5.1 Pure Fiction

No video for Volubility since I couldn't get past eleven stars: I recorded one but it's not worth posting since I didn't even come close to a full clear. I don't want to waste my time editing and making a thumbnail for content I'm not proud of. Additionally, since I wasn't able to finish and I've since done MoC in between my myriad of PF attempts, I lost the ability to save my build showcases for the aforementioned recording, meaning that I would've been missing an entire section of my video. Truly unfortunate, but it is what it is.

I genuinely had such a bad time trying to do this. I spent far more time than I would've liked trying to twelve star and it sucked just about every bit of enjoyment that it could've out of me. I thought I would have a better chance at beating it after a couple weeks away and doing some character upgrades but apparently it just wasn't in the cards this patch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Closing Thoughts

720/800 jades is painful but I have no choice other than to accept it and move on. If I somehow manage a miracle before the 2.6.1 reset, I'll be sure to pop in here to provide an update. Otherwise, that's all from me on PF.

2.5.2 Memory of Chaos

No video for Scalegorge Tidalflow either. I did manage to get all twelve stars, but my mental health is currently kicking my ass, so I just don't have it in me to bother with it (or this post really) before the patch ends.

Quick summary off the dome since I didn't write any notes when I did my run; Boothill continues to pay his dues. Feixiao is fun to play with—I might need to pull Robin or build Moze though because I don’t have a proper third slot for her team. I thought I could clear floor XII quicker than seven cycles, but a few rounds of casual gaming did not yield better results. No showcases because I forgot to make them before giving PF another try and I'm drained.

Closing Thoughts

MoC was fine. The exo-toughness mechanic is interesting, and I hope I get a chance to explore it more when I'm feeling better. All 800 jades have been added to the savings for DHIL's cone.

Alrighty friends, that's it for this post. Sorry about the quality drop; my brain is being a nuisance and I'd prefer to put this out now while I have some motivation left to do it—there’s no guarantee that I would've finished it at all if I decided to delay it further. Not my best yap but it’ll do for archiving purposes.

I hope everyone enjoyed the 2.5 endgame cycle (to the best of their ability)! I'll be back in about six weeks when it's time for the next one of these.

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.3.2 MoC, 2.3.1 AS, & 2.2.1 PF Recaps

I definitely forgot about drafting up the latter part of this post when it was more relevant so excuse my lateness. HSR has a lot of endgame content these days and keeping up with it across multiple different servers is a self-inflicted thorn in my side. So, without further ado, let's get into my yapping (under the cut because this post is long one)!

Apologies in advance for any image distortion: Tumblr doesn’t appear to like long photos.

2.3.2. Memory of Chaos

Dissipation of Dreams dropped yesterday morning and I had been impatiently waiting for it so I could get the Nameless Honor points for getting 15 stars; which, I was informed yesterday, can be earned off of stages that have already been completed. Do you know just how many times I missed out on those stupid xp points back in the early days because I couldn't even get 15 stars in the first place? Would've been great to know about back then, but I digress.

Anyway, as I said, DoD dropped yesterday, and I was fully expecting it to be a bit of a rough time because of how badly it was being dragged in one of the HSR discords I frequent. Much to my surprise, this was the easiest time I've ever had running MoC.

There were a few things that made this MoC easier for me:

The enemy lineup on stage 12 was almost the exact same as the 2.2.2 MoC; they swapped out the elite mob in the first wave of 12-1 for a different one, then flipped the challenge order of 12-1 (The Past, Present, and Eternal Show) and 12-2 (Argenti) so that they were inverted. This meant that I didn't have to think about who to run, and I could just refer to the previous challenge records for guidance. I was able to save myself about 18 wave resets because of this.

I got e5 Gallagher, giving myself a better Boothill team member and freeing up Aven as a secondary sustain for my opposing team lineup.

I've been farming relics like an absolute mad person for the past few weeks to fix some of my builds. Relics make up such a large part of character performance and I could truly feel the difference in the damage output for those I've been able to improve since the last MoC (see new builds below).

I'd rate my enjoyment of this MoC at 4/5 stars. Overall, it wasn't too terribly difficult and went by much faster than any of my previous attempts. This was both a positive/negative for me; while I was glad to have done well and efficiently so, it was very strange not to have to think too much or come back to retry the challenge over the course of a week. I’ve become so used to stopping my runs to farm relics/make team adjustments that it was a bit jarring to finish everything in one sitting. At the end of the day, I got my 800 jades for 36 stars so that's good enough for me.

2.3.1 Apocalyptic Shadow

Stormwind Knight was the integral AS stage, and this one took a bit of finagling to get the final star for 6600+ points. I can't give you an entire rundown on my thoughts as it's been a couple weeks since I finished the challenge, but I vaguely remember having to consult the discord for advice because my brain was not braining with team comps and I had been trying to beat the stage for multiple days.

However, I can tell you that super break Jing Yuan is a meme of a team that I've been using to fight "Harmonious Choir" The Great Septimus since 2.2 when the boss first came out. I don't know what compelled me to do that in the first place since lightning is one of the weaker break types, but here I was using it on stage 3 before having to switch it out for something more effective.

I should also note that, during this challenge, DHIL was on an absolutely trash 2pc/2pc atk% build, making it take far too many tries to get to 6600 points from all his missed crits. Gallagher was also freshly pulled and severely lacking in break effect. Additionally, Aventurine was still running 4-star planar ornaments and half of Tingyun's relics were still 4-star pieces as well. I briefly considered going back into the mode now that all of them have been improved to see how much better of a score I can get, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

2.2.1 Pure Fiction

The Lexical Enigma PF was interesting to say the least. I don’t usually play past the second stage of this mode due to my lack of useful units; I’m still Himeko-less and my duke farming hasn’t been going very well, meaning that Herta is still benched. Hopefully the Navigator will bless me with her presence via standard banner in the near future.

Fortunately for my lack of stellar jade savings, this patch I was feeling especially motivated to have a queen sweep of all the endgame modes; I spent way too much time and put in far more effort than I usually would to get all 12 stars. It was actually my very first time since PF released so yippee! We love progress.

I almost gave up a few times, my pride was hurt, and extreme sacrifices were made to get this finished. If you aren't aware, I have a special amount of spite reserved for Serval; I have nothing against her character (I actually loved playing through her companion mission and using her before version 1.4 came out) I'm just frustrated by the sheer number of times I've pulled both her and her signature light cone since the game came out. S15 Make the World Clamor is ten too many copies of that goddamn lc and I wish I could erase its existence from the game at this point.

That being said, finally releasing Serval from her lvl 70, 5/8/8/8 trace, 4-star relic wearing purgatory was what ultimately led to my success (see build below). Even though it wasn't the best build I could've given her, I'm hoping that it was enough to lift the Serval-based curse that had been placed upon me. And if not, y'all will be hearing about it.

Anyway, that's the extent of my yapping about the endgame modes for now. I'm going to try to put these out after every challenge cycle runs its course so that I'm not making an excessive number of posts about them. I apologize in advance for the impending long posts, but I'd rather not blow up y'all's feeds with separated iterations of my nonsense if I don't have to.

The schedule will still be a bit off for the next one of these recaps since I decided to include the current MoC but not the most recent PF. I'll do my best to get that sorted out asap.

Sheesh, I really rambled my way through this one, didn't I? Fun fact: a severe storm passed over my city while I was writing up this post, causing me to lose power, and I had to rewrite the entire second half of it because auto save wouldn't work without internet access. Don't you just love to see it?

Anyway, thanks for sticking around if you made it to this point! I'll catch y'all later.

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.4.1 AS, 2.4.1 PF, & 2.4.2 MoC Recaps

Another patch has come and gone which means it is once again time for me, your resident yapper, to talk about my endgame experience.

As previously mentioned in my last EGC recap post, the format for these has changed; I’ll be walking you through my thoughts and feelings for the last cycle of all three modes in this post. The sections were drafted out on the days that I completed the challenges (unlike past recaps), so you’re getting a better insight this time around.

I’ve also started filming my clears for the highest level of each mode because it seemed like a fun thing to include: the videos are meant to be a visual representation of my struggles/triumphs within the hardest parts of endgame. These videos are not guides; they’re just the raw footage of my completion runs, and solely intended for the enjoyment of anyone who might be interested in that type of thing. The videos are hosted on my YouTube so I’ll embed all three of them here (the section headings will also lead to them just in case something glitches out) for quick access.

As always, apologies for the image distortion: long photos and Tumblr do not mix well.

Alright, with all that out of the way, the yapping begins under the cut!

2.4.1 Apocalyptic Shadow

Dominated Evils was a very fitting name for this cycle of AS. Overall, it wasn’t very difficult to complete; I got my twelve stars within a total of three challenge waves!

I probably could’ve finished with two waves, but I decided to try the follow-up buff; relying on Aventurine was not the way to go here, I should've changed to the basic atk + additional dmg to weakness broken enemies buff. I won’t lie to you, DHIL dying (I wasn’t paying attention to my shield duration) and Hanya being slower than Tingyun during my initial attempt were also large factors in needing to reset. Once my relics were adjusted accordingly, I was able to put in a decent attempt.

Aventurine was very helpful for resisting Kafka’s domination and avoiding being frozen by the elites. I'm glad that the eff res buff from his shields worked in my favor on this side; if DHIL had gotten cc’d it would've set me back even more than I already was with the bad plays I was making. I should've reset when I messed up my rotation at 1655 AV, but I was being stubborn, so it is what it is.

Here are the builds I used for IV-I:

The Doomsday Beast felt much easier to deal with. Not sure if it’s because the team was better or simply because I was able to dispel any cc that happened with Gallager. The ease could also have been attributed to the fact that I didn’t have to think about skill points (thanks to Boothill’s e1) and knew exactly how my rotation was going to go regardless of how things played out. At the end of the day, this side carried the overall run and, ultimately, got me 27 points over the score that I needed to get. I could always try again to see if a better score is attainable, but I’ve already gotten the rewards so there’s no incentive left to make that worthwhile.

These are the builds I used for IV-II:

800 jades down, and two more endgame modes left for this cycle. Hopefully we’re in for another queen sweep!

Oh hey, look who’s back. Aha. So, there may not have been any incentive to try for a better score, but that didn't stop me from being motivated into doing so by the DHIL clear one of my discord friends did. Since I'm not usually one for “casual gaming” (which is not causal in the slightest), I only gave myself 12 reset attempts to achieve as high of a score as possible on IV-I:

First three resets: +203 points, bringing me up to 3198

Next three: +97 more points, taking me up to a grand total of 3295 (yippee!)

Last six: absolutely abysmal, I got endlessly cc’d and DHIL/Tingyun got obliterated every other run

Sadly, I couldn’t get to 7K points like I had been hoping, but I’m still pumped to have gotten as close as I did. And, on top of that, taking a second crack at IV-I allowed me to get new (shorter, far less embarrassing) footage of my DHIL clear. Doing so meant that I had to re-edit and re-upload the video for it; that was probably for the better though, nobody needed to watch me poorly battle Kafka for twelve minutes...

Anyway, that’s officially a wrap on AS for this patch!

Um, hey again. When I was reviewing the challenge data for the last set of attempts, I realized that I never changed my chosen buff for the first side (please hold for the internalized screaming at my unintentional self-sabotage.) Naturally, I gave AS one more shot with the correct buff equipped:

First reset: +46 points, bringing me up to 6973

Final reset: +153 points, making a grand total of 7126 (yippee! but with more excitement)

Over 7K points achieved! I'm free, for real this time. Can't believe I let the casual gaming demons get to me for Apocalyptic Shadow of all things. I think it's safe to say that I've sufficiently played though this mode for this patch. I'm interested to see what they do with the next one. My money is currently on having to fight Yanqing. We'll see if I was right about that in the next one of these.

What’s poppin’? It’s been two weeks, and I found myself back in AS because I rolled a great new piece for my resident dragon boy, Mr. Daniel Heng, the cuntiest dragon on the silver rails. I can’t add the build showcase here—I’ll hit my image limit early if I do—but trust me when I say it was a solid upgrade: the head rolled well enough to bump me up by 51 places on the SeeleLand leaderboards. I’m currently ranking in the top 1% of DHIL players (in my area) using the same build—number 26 to be exact! The new ranking motivated another set of runs out of me and I was able to increase my overall AS score by 102 points:

IV-I: Kafka vs e2 DHIL, e2 Hanya, e6 Tingyun, e0s1 Aventurine (3515 points)

IV-II: Doomsday Beast vs e2s1 Boothill, e1s1 Ruan Mei, e1 Bronya, e6 Gallagher (3713 points)

Totaling out for a final grand score of 7228 points with 25 cumulative challenge attempts! Great stuff, a genuinely fun time: Apocalyptic Shadow is quickly working its way towards being my favorite of the endgame modes. Since I’m quite satisfied with how everything played out, that’s a wrap on this section!

I also recorded a Honkai: Support Rail bonus run of IV-I with E4 Dan Heng (4-star) if you’re interested in seeing that!

2.4.1 Pure Fiction

Words of Deceit was [redacted colorful complaining]. I didn't think it was possible for my hatred towards PF to increase, but here we are. I’ll admit that it was partially my fault for being both sleepy and hangry. I’d argue that it was mostly the whimsicality's fault for being rather ineffective overall, felt like sabotage to me. It's fine though, I managed to obtain all twelve stars within ten attempts (yippee!)

Clearing this time around would've been a lot worse without team suggestions from discord—big shoutout and thanks to the folks there for their encouragement and assistance!

So, this PF was the fastest I've ever cleared. It was also the most frustrated I've been whilst playing this mode. Usually, the struggle only applies to stage IV; this time around, stage III was the reason for my infuriation. I sincerely don't know what came over me, but I was malding enough to have to force myself to go back to sleep. I tried four different teams and couldn't hit 60K points: the closest I came was just over 59K and that was with all of my focus and Frankensteining together better builds for every character that I tried to use. It was tragic to say the least. Ultimately, sleep, food, fresh eyes, and the 8th attempt were the saving graces that allowed me to move on to the true challenge, stage IV.

Stage IV took significantly less tries; I only ended up taking two attempts to get the three-star clear! Aside from having to change my buffs and making sure that my speed tuning was right for IV-II, I didn't have to put in all that much effort. Still a bit baffled by that if I'm being honest: I thought I was in for a very tumultuous experience considering how the previous stage had gone. Thankfully, that was not the case, and I can move on from this for the time being.

These are the builds I used for IV-I:

Some of Herta’s stat information is incorrect because she was actually lvl 60 at the time of this run; Fribbels only generates maxed out showcases and I wanted the pictures to match. :)

These are the builds I used for IV-II:

Not the best, not the worst. I got it done and that's really all that matters. Another 800 jades added to the Sparkle funds!

Well, well, well, look how the turn tables. Hello again, it's been a few weeks since wrapping up my clear. I pulled Sparkle, motivating me to go back into PF for some casual gaming (I know, two endgame modes in a row—I've stumbled down a dark path this patch.) This third round of attempts went much worse than I was hoping for. I did manage to get a better clear, so I decided to have that be my representational video instead. It took so many tries that I'm afraid to go look at the updated info on Hoyolab. I think it's better for my overall happiness and sanity if I let that remain a mystery—high score chasing at its finest (I have so many regrets. Why did I do this to myself?)

In the end, I was able to increase my score by 4129 points:

IV-I: Kafka vs e1s1 Ruan Mei, e0 Seele, e0s1 Aventurine, e6 Herta (40000 points)

IV-II: Cocolia vs e1 Bronya, e6 Asta, e6 Gallagher, e6 Serval (27805 points)

I went through a good amount of team lineups, relic swapping, buff changing, and character upgrading to make this happen. Desperate times called for desperate measures, I was so hung up on getting a better clear that I leveled Herta to 80 and 6/10/10/11'd her traces. I had not planned on doing that for at least a couple more patches since her relics are still a bit trash, but it was the most effective option that I had at the time. Doing so made getting to 40K points on IV-I possible, which was most of the point increase, so I'd say it was worth it.

Now, IV-II was painful. I can't explain my thought process here because there wasn't really one to begin with. Serval gaming is fine for what it is. I genuinely do not think that it was possible for me to hit 30K on this side at all. Don't doubt that I tried every sensible double dps comp that I could, because I did, and failed miserably. Swapping Aventurine and Gallagher didn't work; using Sparkle didn't work; hell, even stealing the entirety of Seele's team didn't work! I don't know what else I could've done… and I'm over it, so we're moving on.

At the end of this excursion, I don't have anything good to say about PF. It does not spark joy for me. Hopefully that changes some day; Himeko will save me once she decides to grace me with her presence, she is the vital unit that I am missing to achieve greatness. Until then, I'll just have to ride with it. I'll keep working on my characters and, eventually, clearing will go better for me.

That's a wrap on this section. I'm 1000% burnt out on PF after this whole ordeal. I don't want to think about it anymore.

2.4.2 Memory of Chaos

The Big Sleep was a snoozefest: I got all twelve stars without any resets this time around! And I four-cycled floor XII for the first time! You absolutely love to see it. I can't believe that just nine months ago I couldn't even get through floor VIII without wanting to cry from frustration. Oh, how the times have changed.

Since this challenge flew by with ease, I don’t have much to say about it. I was a big fan of the buff this time around; I love it when the buff is universal and aligns with pretty much anyone I want to play with. I foresee a lot of casual gaming in my future.

With the help of my newest addition, Sparkle, I was able to clear the first half with renewed efficiency. Daniel and Hanya have been separated after nine months of partnership, it feels so good to no longer have to hyperactively think about my skill point usage. I knew that Sparkle was going to be a large upgrade for my DHIL team, but I didn’t think she would shave off four cycles worth of turns (and I haven’t even finished her build yet! Like huh??? She’s great, I’m a big fan.)

Here are the builds I used for XII-I:

The second side faired just about as well as the first. Boothill shredded Aventurine down before he even got the chance to take me into a showdown. As much as I love Aven, I hate his boss form, so it felt incredibly satisfying to enact my revenge on him after struggling so much against him the first time he was introduced into endgame. No more are the days of having to make Jingliu brute force her way through the dice rolls (thank the Aeons!)

These are the builds I used for XII-II:

Another one for the books! Got the final 800 jades for this patch, this time to be added to the Feixiao funds (yes, I’m pulling for her now. You may call me a hypocrite this once. I will be betraying Danny boy by going for a new and improved wind hunt unit. This is a stain on my pride as a four-star Dan stan; unfortunately for him, Feixiao’s hot, clever, strong, one hell of a badass General with dope animations and a back tattoo that fucking glows, brother. What kind of gay would I be if I didn’t at least throw a solid 50 or so pulls in her direction? Have you seen the lesbian kryptonite of a banner lineup that’s coming in 2.5?? It’ll be a miracle if I go into 2.6 with any savings at all!)

Surprise, surprise, the prodigal gamer returns. Did you really think I was going to one and done this mode after casual gaming all patch long? Not much to report aside from going back in with my original teams to try for a cleaner run. My efforts were well worth it, I managed to shave off a cycle from my original clear, netting me with my first ever three-cycle in MoC 12 (yippee!)

Whoop whoop! We're officially wrapped on all the endgame modes for 2.4! What a yapfest this was, I cannot believe I prattled on for this long. If you made it all the way here, thanks for sticking with me until the end. I'll catch y'all in about six weeks for the next recap.

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.3.1 PF Recap

This is the last solo post I'll be doing for endgame content. After I’ve finished 2.4’s cycle, I'll do one long post about all the EGC recaps for it; the same process will apply to all future cycles (subject to change upon the release of more modes—I can only yap for so long before hitting the dreaded word limit.) Everything should be easier for me to keep track of this way. I hope you'll like the new format when the time comes!

Apologies for the image distortion: Tumblr doesn’t do well with long photos.

A little later than I wanted to be on this recap but it's finally here! PF is still my least favorite form of endgame so I took my sweet time getting around to it. Thankfully, it only took three sessions worth of trying to finish this time around.

I ended up needing to use four different teams to get all 12 stars. While I did try to do both stages with the same two teams, this ultimately was not possible because the elites on stage IV were trickier to deal with and my chosen buffs were not working how I had envisioned they would. I tried using my stage III teams on IV, with every possible combination of the buffs, but I wasn’t putting out enough damage during the first phase of enemies, leading to a lack of cycle actions by the time the boss phase had arrived. It also didn’t help that Jing Yuan kept getting cc’d (i.e. trapping lightning lord), which always ruined my run, forcing me to reset time and time again.

Unsurprisingly, I called upon my resident dragon (good ol’ Mr. Failsafe) to waterboard my enemies to death. DHIL is great in a lot of places, but I don’t think he’s the most optimal unit for PF. I had to swap out so many of my support character’s pieces to make his side work for me. The process went a bit like this: gearing, trying, failing, resetting, failing, resetting, getting cc’d, resetting, failing, leaving, re-gearing, trying, failing, resetting, getting cc’d, resetting, failing, leaving, changing the buff, trying (again, and again, and again until I got tired of it and when back to the Jing Yuan team, just to be brutally reminded that that team was not going to work; thereby going back to the DHIL team), and persevering until I got enough points to move on to the second side.

These are the builds I ended up using on IV-1:

The Seele side was much less tedious; it followed the same process as the DHIL side, with the most notable difference being that I was swapping between secondary dps/support options instead of re-gearing my characters. It wasn’t until midway through the second session of attempts that I decided to just bite the bullet and use my severely underleveled Herta. With Herta in tow, I figured out the best strategy for giving myself as many turns as possible during the first enemy phase. After I got the rhythm going it was smooth sailing; that is unless Herta died or someone got cc’d by the deer’s roots, making me have to reset a nearly perfect run (disgruntled sigh). In the end, I was able to score over 33K points on this side, which was good enough to get me where I needed to be to secure the infamous 12th star.

These builds were used on IV-2:

Some of Herta’s stat information is incorrect because she’s actually lvl 60 on my account; Fribbels only generates maxed out showcases and I wanted the pictures to match. :)

Truly a process of all time. I suppose it was worth it because 800 jades added to the Sparkle fund is better than nothing. If the next PF only has follow-up buffs, I might lose it a little bit. I can't keep living like this. Himeko, please! Come home (on standard), I'm begging.

Alright, that's enough of this. I’ll see y’all in 2.5 for the next one. Thanks for reading!

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.2.2 MoC Recap

Another MoC for the books — and with only the slightest bit of malding on my part. Yippee!

Sorry if the image quality is fuzzy, tumblr was being glitchy asf when I uploaded the picture.

Anyway, stage 12 (side two specifically) was an experience of all time. 28 of my resets were from that floor alone. Not a fan of the newest Penacony enemies or their mechanics. It truly hurt to be without a fire dps; usually, I can make do with brute-forcing but it took a lot of planning and testing to make it work this time around. Quite literally had to two cycle 12-1 to give myself as much time as I possibly could on 12-2. When I tell y’all I scraped by the skin of my teeth on the 20th cycle — good golly. There was a litany of happy curses flying from my mouth when I finally beat the stage with three stars.

I managed to do a pretty nice chunk of damage with the cowboy too:

I didn’t intend to run a nearly mono-ice team but my sustains are extremely slim pickings at the moment. This was from one of my later strategy runs. Hadn’t realized I would be able to one shot Argenti with this team. I actually got this side down to a one cycle after I figured out the rotation. It was increasingly satisfying to see 700k+ hits coming from Boothill during this endeavor.

Not a bad MoC. Would’ve been easier with a proper fire or lightning dps but was still manageable with some finagling. Now to wait for the next one 😈

[tjemegames]

HSR: 2.1.2 & 2.2.1 MoC Recap

Finally free from 36 star chasing in MoC for this patch! What a doozy this whole ordeal was to finish; cleared it without rage quitting or jade fomo too. That’s a win in my book.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to 3 star White Night Chronicles stage 12. Fighting Aventurine was making me so frustrated and spiteful; I had to spend 10 days grinding out ice/spd relics and do 3 full runs of SU 7 for a rutilant ice dmg sphere (that didn’t even roll into crit rate like I needed it to) just to finally beat him.

I understand that this is endgame content but good golly, it simply didn’t need to be that hard of a win. Not too mad at it because my Jingliu and Asta are undeniably stronger than they had been before — they’re both SS rank on Fribbels now — and I also was able to get better pieces for Bronya and Silver Wolf during the process.

For Dream Within Dream, however, I decided to take the road less traveled and use my favorite nameless. I love playing with Dan Heng but, unfortunately, a lot of people benched him early game or never thought he was worthy of building in the first place. So, in honor of him finally leaving the archives this patch, I yoinked these gloves, boots, & sphere from other characters *cough cough* *ahem* I mean, I optimized his build (see below) and put him to work.

I’ll be straight with y’all, Dan Heng gaming my way through MoC has been the most enjoyable experience I’ve had with endgame content so far. Going with someone I like instead of attempting a meta team made such a big difference for me. I was actually motivated to do well for the fun of it rather than the fomo on jades. Turns out that things are better when you actually enjoy them, crazy right?

Anyway, I’m glad that it’s over and I can move on to doing other things. It’ll be nice to leave the ice mines behind for a little while. On to Pure Fiction 12 star chasing! That totally won’t send me down another min-maxing spiral. Aha 🫠

[tjemegames]

HSR: HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY! 🥳🎉 - TJ’s 2nd Annual Playthrough Recap

Two years of playing the same game every day is not for the faint of heart, especially when it's a live service gacha game. The last year has been... something. I’m feeling a little more negative about it than in the first year but, miraculously, I still find myself enjoying the game. More on that later, let’s get into it under the cut!

⚠️ Extremely summarized spoilers ahead for the events/storylines of HSR versions 2.2-3.2. Read at your own discretion! ⚠️

Apologies for any image distortion, Tumblr’s not a fan of long photos.

Stats Overview

Another year of traversing the silver rail has come to pass. I knew from the way that I fell in love with this game on day one that I'd be playing it for the long haul. The Astral Express Annual Trailblaze Report (data collection as of 03/31/2025 at 23:59) offered some interesting statistical insight on what I've gotten up to since the last anniversary. Sadly, there isn't a comprehensive sharable image this year, so I’ve compiled the highlights that I found most interesting:

As of today, 4/26/25, I've logged 707 days of gameplay on my main account (with a 602 day consecutive login streak)!

Companion Interactions

These were the new characters that I got over the course of the year:

My ride or dies:

I love Aventurine, he's great and he very sparingly lets my main dps die (not a skill issue, don't perceive me). I totally, definitely, only spent so much time with him because of how much I like him and not because I still hadn’t pulled another limited sustain until April 3rd, almost a full year after getting him.

I severely underestimated the amount of use my Ruan Mei has seen over the last year. I knew that it was going to be a lot, but I didn't think that she would be my second most used character since I pulled three more limited harmony units this year. Wild to see, honestly. I'm interested to see which harmony unit takes the top spot next year; it’ll likely be Robin—maybe Sunday if I get really into memosprite gaming—but I doubt it’ll be Ruan Mei again.

The KING Yuan resurgence was so real! I hadn't really used my general all that much before the midpoint of Penacony: I love him, but he just wasn't putting out the damage I needed to use him consistently. Thankfully, he got so much love this past year via Sunday and the unfortunate rise of erudition necessity, so I felt motivated to get as much out of him as I possibly could. I'm still in the Duke trenches for him, aha. Surely, I'll earn my freedom soon (I won't.)

My E2 boys, Horny Daniel and Mr. PewPew (DHIL and Boothill), saw much less action than I expected of them. I'm not going to lie, most of their battles took place in endgame or the Simulated Universe. The enemy lineups in the story and overworld during the latter half of the year didn't really allow me to use either of them as much as I would've liked to. I hope that changes here in the near future because I've invested far too much time and resources into the two of them for them to ride the bench as much as they have been.

Gallagher: cinema. I fished for his eidolons (it was a painful process) and he has been putting in work ever since then. Even though I finally cracked and pulled Huohuo a few weeks ago, he isn't allowed to take a vacation until we leave Amphoreus. I'm petty and he was far more expensive than he should've been, I’ll continue to hold that against him until I’m satisfied.

So, Nihility... Listen, DoT gaming isn’t for me. Pela is cool though. I would say that I'll try to use her more this year, but I'd be lying. Since Silver Wolf is getting buffed in 3.4 and she's been living on my bench since around 2.1 (probably earlier), I'll be making a conscious effort to get some use out of her instead.

RMC is super fun and incredibly strong. Unfortunately, Mem tries to crash my game every single time I put them on my team so I’ve gotta be mindful of where I’m using them. I haven't gotten any other Remembrance characters yet: Aglaea, while gorgeous and a little bit scary, was not interesting enough to call for pulling her. I like the idea of summoners so I’m intrigued to see what the Devs will cook up for future units. Until then, my Trailblazer will be leading the charge in that path.

Trailblazing!

The life of a Nameless can be summed up through their adventures. This is what the last year of mine consisted of:

Trailblaze Power Usage & Relic Farming:

It's been two straight years in the Rutilant mines, and I still only have one attack sphere. I'm not gonna say that the game is bullying me, but I feel a bit bullied at this point.

I understand that the grind is supposed to be challenging to ensure that you have a reason to stick around during downtime between story, events, etc. However, I feel like the drop rates could use a tiny bit of tweaking. The introduction of custom synthesis and reroll dice are nice in theory but they’re not very practical if you’re F2P or a low spender because of their rarity. It’s very much a bandaid on a bullet wound when the system is in dire need of stitches. I highly doubt that they’ll ever adjust the rates, at the very least I would like to see an increase in the ability to freely obtain these premium resources. Hell, at this point I’d just settle for more frequent double drop events. All I know is somethings gotta give. I can’t keep living like this.

World Exploration & Achievement Hunting:

The hoarder in me loves exploring the map to find treasure, collectibles, readables, and the like. I spend a good bit of time checking out the world and looking through all its nooks and crannies. You would think that the game only being semi-open world would deter you from doing so, but the more recent worlds have felt like they’re trying to cater to the players who enjoy exploration by adding more collectibles (like the origami birds and Amphoreus bugs) to find. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the exploration increase and I’m glad that the Devs had the foresight to allow you to buy hints for the collectibles that you might’ve missed along the way. The Hoyolab interactive map is helpful, but it can be a pain to navigate, the hints make everything so much simpler.

The treasure compasses have also been a great addition for explorers. It’s easy to get turned around in some of the maps with more unique layouts which can really hinder the ability to find treasure chests. Giving us a tool to track them down was the right move; I haven’t had much of a chance to use mine yet but I’m happy to have them regardless.

When it comes to achievements, I have one tiny little grievance: I don’t think that there should be character-locked achievements. Firstly, the idea that the average player will pull for every character is unrealistic. I don’t like locking people out of chances to earn premium currency because they do not have the necessary tools to even try at getting it. Sure, five jades are nothing in the grand scheme of things, but eventually those little increments tally up to something much larger, and people will have reason to feel bad about it. It helps that some of the achievements can be obtained by borrowing a unit from a friend, or with trial units during events and banner reruns, but that doesn’t cover the whole of the issue. There are still interaction, exploration, and team-based achievements that can’t be done without owning certain units. It’s frustrating from a completionist perspective and I sincerely wish that the Devs would stop allowing it to happen.

That being said, I’m a good ways off from having finished every achievement. There are so many related to the Simulated Universe and its various expansions that I am nowhere close to getting. Eventually, I’ll lock in and knock out a good chunk of them. For now, I’m not really all that worried about it, they’re not going anywhere.

Battle Shenanigans & Trailblaze Assistance:

A busy year of fighting enemies! 21 million single attack damage ain’t too shabby. Do I know who did that damage? No, not a clue. I’d imagine it was done in DU with a fuck ton of buffs and the eidolon cheese curio though.

Boothill really took his bounties seriously this year. Shoutout to everyone who used my Cowboy, thanks for the credits! I do wonder how much of the remaining funds were attributed to my other assistants; it would’ve been nice to see a full breakdown of the assists in this section. Oh well, perhaps next year they’ll give us more information.

Story Recap & Storytelling Assessment

Honestly, everything that happened from 2.2 to 2.7 has mostly left my brain (I've been dealing with some health issues for a little while now, so my memory has been shoddy at best) and Amphoreus has been a massive infodump that I’m still sorting through. That being said, this section is a bit harder to write this time, but I’ll do my best.

Story Recap

I had to go back into the story map and do some research to refamiliarize myself with this past year of trailblazing. Turns out we did quite a bit:

Learned the history of the Watchmaker and the fate of Nameless passed 🥹

Discovered the true meaning of dreaming in Penacony and prevented the resurrection of the Order

Became an amateur film maker to help repair the big screen at Clock Studios Theme Park

Became Penacony shareholders and owner of the Radiant Feldspar

Became the best damn Origami Bird Clash Player in Penacony

Returned to the Xianzhou Loufu to attend the Wardance and helped March 7th “master” Xianzhou swordplay

Got trapped in The Shackling Prison with the borisin Warhead, Hoolay, who breaks free and goes on a massacre before managing to escape his centuries-long confinement there. Learned Hoolay’s history with the Loufu, began the hunt for him with Feixiao, engaged in a brief war, and brought about his downfall during a fakeout Wardance where he loses a 1v1 against Feixiao’s dark aura, thereby bringing the Loufu to safety (yet again)

Dan Heng v. Elder Taoran: “The oath of the Xianzhou means nothing to the spear in my hand!”  I love Dan Heng. SS tier scene, truly

Became the best damn coach at the Wardance: Luka loses but that’s okay because winning was the friends we made along the way, apparently

Penacony University AU: monkeys, bananas, ninjas, oh my!

Became the best damn band manager in Penacony

Fugue and Sunday’s Great Penaconian Adventure

We FINALLY get a room on the Express: DIY Room Makeover and Express Slice of Life

Sunday joins the Express (yippee!)

The Amphoreus arc begins. Phainon is so pretty. TJ is screwed

Rainbow gaslight waves do not work on Therta: Grandpa and Sunday’s Space Station Adventure

Amphoreus info dumping galore (I’m not getting into this right now. We’ll talk about everything next year)

Those were the main highlights. There were a decent number of events and side quests as well; events have felt a lot less substantial than year one, while side quests have gotten a nice increase in both quantity and quality. I do miss the days of long spanning events that felt conducive to the story and/or worldbuilding. Unfortunately, there were hardly any companion missions. I miss those as well; I hope that we’ll get more for all the characters who have yet to have one. We deserve more interactive opportunities to learn about the characters we’ve met on our journey. I don’t want everything to get sandwiched into the main quest like with Aventurine, Acheron, Feixiao, and all the Amphoreus folks so far. Bring back companion missions, Hoyo!

Storytelling Assessment

Some of this might be hard to understand because I was having trouble relaying my thoughts. I apologize in advance, the yap factory has been open too long today.

Overall, I’m enjoying the story that Honkai: Star Rail is telling. Every world that we’ve been to over the last year has had independent themes, unique ideals and problems, as well as lively environments that were able to immerse me in that specific place. While there is a recurring pattern of “hey, this place is in crisis: the Stellaron is the problem, and we need the Nameless to solve it” that doesn’t detract from the experience because of the nuance in the way things manifest and how those manifestations are handled.

Penacony was a bit hit-or-miss for me. I feel like there were quite a few moments that just didn’t hit me the way that the Storywriters intended. I don’t know if that’s because of the way we were introduced to certain characters or the fact that the reality of the dream wasn’t what was presented to us, but something about the narrative felt clunky and unsatisfying.

Maybe part of the issue is the way they implemented the shifting perspective gameplay; there were a lot of moving parts and fragments strung together in a way that hadn’t been presented before, and the tonal shifting was a bit all over the place because of it. It also doesn’t help that the cutscene sequences had a tendency of being lengthy without any way to pause them. There were times when you would be stuck in a 45-minute loop of time sequencing and perspective shifting without any real chance to slow down and take stock of the information you learned. Eh, it was a bit much, which is probably why I’ve forgotten most of it. I can only hope that the promised continuation in 3.8 will smooth out the kinks.

The return to the Loufu was interesting. It felt less like a continuation of the Xianzhou arc and more like a set up for the Wardance event itself. It was fine for what it was, but I’m not sure how I’m supposed to feel about it in conjunction to the rest of the Xianzhou story so far. At this point, I just want to see where the pieces we’ve been given will link together with the other ships. Clearly there’s a lot of history we’re not aware of and I feel less satisfied with the information we do have when it takes so long to continue from where we left off.

I have a natural skepticism when it comes to the Xianzhou storytelling because of how rough it was in the beginning. I feel like the writers have gotten better about some things, while still lacking in others. The biggest thing for me is always going to be the conciseness of delivery. I don’t enjoy roundabout storytelling. It’s fine if I need to come to some conclusions on my own, I welcome the test of my comprehension, but don’t add in information that’s going to send me in circles around the message you’re trying to convey. It detracts from the experience and ultimately leaves me wanting for more in a bad way. Once again, I fear we’re at the mercy of time.

In a surprising turn of events, the things that bothered me about the earlier worlds do not bother me in Amphoreus. Since it’s meant to be completely unknown to the entirety of the cosmos, the excess of information dumping feels more acceptable. I’m still not a fan of extremely long and unstoppable cutscenes here, don’t get it twisted, but the perspective switching feels more structured, and I have a better grasp on what’s going on. I’m not caught up with 3.2 yet so there’s a chance that my feelings will change. I’m feeling rather hopeful about this world though—it might end up being my favorite one by the time we leave it.

Permanent Game Modes

Simulated Universe

A thing of the past for veteran players. Don't think I've gone into a SU world since Divergent Universe quick farming came into being. That seems to be exactly what the Devs wanted considering that the Sigonia & Izumo planars are the most recent ones that you can get in this mode. 'Twas somewhat fun while it lasted; although, I'm much happier with the optimized version.

Swarm Disaster

Not a fan, I don’t like the swarm bug and getting through all the pillars feels like a monumental feat. Even with following a guide that a friend from discord made, it’s just so much to do. I think I’m down to the final pillar, but it’s been well over six months since I last tried to make any progress toward finishing it. Bleh.

Gold & Gears

I like this mode more than swarm but it’s also one of the more time-consuming things that I don’t have the motivation to bother with. I think I got about halfway through with it before deciding to leave it until I’m desperate for jades again.

Unknowable Domain

I haven’t even talked to Screwllum, he’s still hanging out in Herta’s office, and he’s gonna stay there for the foreseeable future. I won’t be messing with this mode until I’m ready to hunt for its achievements.

Divergent Universe

I have a sneaking suspicion that the astronomical overtaking of the DU is the culprit behind the diminishing number of comprehensive events that we've seen over the last year.

It might not seem like it, but DU has a lot of content: a plethora of lore drops, integrations of "new" paths, consistent changes to buff names for thematical reasons (which is cool but arguably unnecessary, the time spent renaming things could probably be better spent elsewhere), and the introduction of new gimmicks in both battle and adventure domains. There's a significant amount of time being spent on this mode and I don't see it falling off anytime soon since it holds a prominent significance in the game's lore via the Genius Society.

I have a hard time gauging how I feel about DU because, on the one hand, it’s great; the planar farming optimization is something I use weekly and appreciate the efficiency of. On the other hand, the actual main content is very time consuming, the rewards have a time limit, and there's a whole upper echelon of increased difficulty content that is aimed towards a very specific type of hardcore player. Though that hardcore content doesn't usually offer anything other than brownie points, the completionist in me is disgruntled when I'm unable to finish everything in the version because the gameplay is too difficult.

sigh

Looking back at this section, I might just have beef with the Genius Society's projects specifically. 🤣

Rotational Endgame Modes

While being the main source of consistent jade accumulation (aside from the Trailblaze Missions), endgame is not free of drawbacks. Each patch is worth a whopping 2400 jades (15 pulls), which makes it almost mandatory to complete if you want to get the most out of the game. Unfortunately, turbulent meta shifting and difficulty “balancing” for the newest overpowered units have made it a pain to deal with over the course of the last year.

It’s been a while since I’ve finished endgame without deflating in relief afterward. I miss the days when it was exciting and I was counting down the days until the modes would reset; now I just want to get in, get out, and then stay as far away from it as possible until it’s time to repeat the process all over again. I don’t enjoy it now, in 3.2, as much as I was enjoying it from 2.4 to 2.6.

Apocalyptic Shadow

My favorite endgame mode by far. It’s the most recent one, having been released in 2.3, and I’d say the most unique of the three. AS has a higher ceiling of possibility for creativity than the other modes do. It’s the only mode that I want to return to for team testing and general tomfoolery.

Positives:

I can clear everything in one session

I've been able to get 12 stars every patch since it debuted

Some bosses have unique gameplay mechanics that are fun to manipulate

Flexible enough to use my favorite units effectively

Negatives:

Buffs tend to cater to a specific type of gameplay, or the newest unit being sold

An increased number of elites has made it more challenging to clear than it was in the past

Pure Fiction

My least favorite mode. It could cease to exist tomorrow, and I’d be happy to see it go. I’ve never enjoyed this mode; it rubbed me the wrong way from the start because of its need for specific units. As someone who mostly owns single-target units, it’s an absolute nightmare to manage. I sincerely think that they should’ve given us a free erudition five star to go along with it when it was originally released.

Positives:

Mechanics changes in 2.7 have made it more possible to clear with single target units

Negatives:

It takes more time and effort to get three stars than I’d like; it can take me anywhere from a few sessions to a dozen sessions to complete. There have been times when I’m unable to get all my stars, regardless of my efforts

Forces me to ask for team comp advice and shuffle relics around to accommodate a different style of gameplay

Caters specifically to erudition and AOE units

Weakness mixes on both sides are too similar, making it difficult to complete if you’re lacking multiple multi-target or AOE units

Memory of Chaos

My second favorite mode. It’s very middle of the road, I don’t really have any strong feelings about it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Positives:

I’ve been able to get 36 stars consistently over the last year

Flexible enough to allow for a variety of playstyles

Negatives:

A toss up on time consumption: can either take one session or multiple sessions, there’s no in between

Memory turbulence is often lackluster and can be completely useless if you don’t have the right units for it

The Triumphs & Perils of Warping

Would it be gacha without trying your luck? I've been keeping close track of my pulls since launch. This is my roster after two years, 550 standard passes, and 1651 special passes:

Characters

As you saw back in the stats overview, I got quite a few limited characters this past year:

Did you know that e2 Boothill was not originally on the docket for me? I hadn’t even considered getting him when he got dripped. It wasn’t until the livestream when the Devs showed off his animations that the voices started to creep in; his little lean got to me, I don't know why. When I got to hear his English VA for the first time, I knew it was jover. e0 was the plan. Fishing for Himeko ensued and I ended up at e2, aha. No regrets, I’ve had so much fun with him.

Himeko was the hardest to obtain. After eight months of hoping for her to show up on the standard banner or in a 50/50 loss, I ended up using my 2.7 Express Gift selector to get her. Hands down, the best choice I could’ve made for my account at that time; I was struggling with a lack of fire coverage and PF was annoying me enough to make me consider pulling an erudition unit that I didn’t necessarily want. That selector was honestly a godsend. I know that the folks in the discord were probably getting tired of listening to me plead for Himeko to come home. 🫠

Feixiao was another unplanned addition to my roster. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t pull her because I needed to stay loyal to Dan Heng. And then BAM! Glowing back tattoo. It was a wrap, and she took everything from me.

Huohuo was a rather late, spur of the moment decision for me because I was malding over 3.2’s MoC 12. I'd been planning to wait for Hyacine to come out so that I could try to grab her. I was also flirting with the idea of getting Lingsha the next time she reran. I made it nearly two years into the game without a five star healer so I figured I’d be okay for a couple more months. I was wrong. It’s okay though, I don't regret pulling her in the slightest. She was probably the best limited healer I could've chosen for my account with my penchant for hypercarry gaming.

I also got Sparkle, Sunday, and Robin this year. You can never have too many harmony units! The three of them allowed me to unbench some of the older dps characters that I was avoiding. I’m very happy with their performances, especially in endgame, they've made a world of difference.

Besides the 2.7 Express Gift selector, in 3.2 we were also given the choice to use a Golden Companion Spirit Token to claim either Ruan Mei or Luocha from the new Stellar Convergence shop. I decided to save my token for a future character since I already have e1 Ruan Mei and I did not feel Luocha was worth getting without owning Blade or Mydei. There’s no telling how often they will add characters to the shop so there’s a chance I’ll be holding onto my token for a long time.

Light Cones

My light cone situation is both funny and painful. I’m the ruler of useless four star cones. I don’t know what it is about my account that attracts them, but I can’t seem to keep them away. For context, I got 14 copies of The Birth of the Self this past year. 14. That’s unnecessary and hilarious. Don’t get me started on the other ones, trust, I have words. However, I’ve already yapped far too much in this post to get in to all of that.

As far as limited cones are concerned, I mostly only pull for a sig if I don’t have or like the F2P alternative(s), it has QoL or kit extension that would make building them and/or their teammates easier, I purposely saved for it, or DDD is running alongside it. Otherwise, I’m fine without it, in most cases. I mean look at DHIL, I’ve had him the entire time he’s been out, and he still doesn’t have his cone because he’s doing just fine without it.

Pull Luck

My luck is a tiny step above average, I would say. This is how things have shaped up since launch:

I’ve had 19 limited character 50/50s. Of those I’ve lost 7, putting me at an average win ratio of 68.4%:

2 losses to Gepard

2 losses to Bronya

1 loss to Clara

2 losses to Yanqing

My overall average pity is 66. Out of 25 characters received:

10 came before the 75th pull

15 came after the 75th pull

Earliest pull = 16 pity

Latest pull = 80 pity

I’ve had 8 light cone 75/25s. Of those I’ve lost 4, putting me at an average win ratio of 50%:

2 losses to Sleep Like the Dead

1 loss to In the Name of the World

1 loss to Moment of Victory

My overall average pity is 52. Out of 12 cones received:

7 came before the 65th pull

5 came after the 65th pull

Earliest pull = 16 pity

Latest pull = 73 pity

I’ve had 9 standard five star pulls. Of those I’ve gotten 5 characters and 4 cones. My most reoccurring characters are Welt and Yanqing, tied at 2 copies each.

My overall average pity is 59. Out of 9 five stars received:

5 came before the 75th pull

4 came after the 75th pull

Earliest pull = 28 pity

Latest pull = 80 pity

Aside from a few very unfortunate pull sessions that bankrupted me, I’m not too upset with my luck in the game thus far. I do wish that I wouldn’t get so many copies of Welt and Yanqing because, even though I love both of their characters, I don’t really enjoy playing with them, so their eidolons are going to waste. I suppose the bright side is that, as of 3.2, hitting e7 on any given five star character will give you special currency that can be used in the Stellar Convergence shop. Potential future dividends are better than nothing, I guess.

Future Plans & Wishlist

I’m the type of person who will always pull for a character they like over trying to keep up with the meta. HSR makes it a bit harder to stick with that mindset because of the continual influx of new premium units who powercreep each other. At this point in my playthrough, there is only one character that I’ve pulled because I felt like I couldn’t complete content without them (Huohuo).

For the most part, I try to be as strategic and mindful as possible when it comes to the five stars I pull for my account. In the early days I didn’t pay too much attention to path versatility and that has come back to bite more times than not. Having learned that lesson, these are my loose plans for the future:

Further diversify path portfolio. stop pulling hunt TJ, you have enough

Make the dive into nihility gaming, doesn’t necessarily have to be DoT but I do need to get comfortable using units from that path

Invest in synergistic units for endgame, specifically PF

Get at least one more premium sustain

Invest in premium cones with good versatility, even if I don’t want the character that cone was intended for

At this moment in time, my wishlist consists of:

Phainon: whenever he comes out, regardless of path or element, because I love him as a character. Will likely go for e2s1 if it’s worth it or he fulfills a role that I’m lacking in

Tribbie: harmony. What else is there to say really? She’s adorable, very strong, and is not likely to fall off for a very long time—she has indefinite value

Screwllum: Hoyo, when?!? I just love him. I don’t care what rarity he ends up being, I will be getting him

Anaxa: I need more erudition units, and I like his character.

Yunli: I don’t want to play with Clara on this account and she’s the only other unit who has counter mechanics. Not a high want, I would be more than fine waiting for another unit in her role to come out

Jade: still on the fence. She would be useful with PF and follow-up comps but I’m fine waiting for someone else with the same role to come out

Mydei: he’s Babygirl, sorry. Unfortunately, not a priority because he’s imaginary and I’ve got more than enough of that to go around. He’d be more of a collector’s item than anything else. That could change though, it just depends on where the game goes and if need for his role outweighs his element

Blade: collector’s item, he’s the one HCQ member that I’m missing. He’s also one of my favorite characters

Final Thoughts

Firstly, if you read all of this, you’re a trooper. I’m putting myself on yapping timeout after this because it did not need to be this long. Why am I like this?

Anyway, year two was fun. Despite its highs and lows, I can’t deny that I enjoyed myself. This game is one of my favorites. It has its problems, the first being that it’s a gacha in the first place. Eh. The rest fall in line with balancing issues and corporate greed. Without those things, the game has a lot of potential and promise. You can see it in the detail that Devs put into some of the most minuscule content (readables and random side quests). It’s a bit tragic to know how good things could be if the need to sell this product to us wasn’t at the forefront of its presentation.

I plan on sticking around for the entirety of HSR’s runtime. I love the concept of it, and I care about where the Nameless will go and how we reach the end of our journey. If that means a few more years of touch and go before the Devs truly lock in and deliver beyond my expectations, then so be it. There are worst things I could do with my free time.

May this journey lead us starward!

[tjemegames]

HSR: E4 Dan Heng Dominates Evil | 2.4.1 AS IV-I

Apocalyptic Shadow caught me by surprise and managed to become my favorite endgame mode within two patches of its release. Since this clear was just a fun run that I did (independent of my upcoming 2.4 Endgame Recap), I've decided to give it a post of its own.

I won't be breaking down this one because it's after 5AM and I've been awake for nearly 24 hours. I hope you enjoy the run regardless. Build cards are showcased at the end of the video.

Thanks for watching!

A little spoiler from the clear:

Big hit, big hit, big hit! I love when he does stupid amounts of damage (*^ᴗ^)ﾉｼ

Okay, bye for real now. I need to go to sleep before my brain melts.

[tjemegames]

An ongoing log of my gaming shenanigans. Looking for something specific? Allow me to be your guide.

All the headers lead to a personalized tag of my created content for the corresponding game. Everything else will lead to its listed category (or to a secondary navigation post if that specific category calls for it).

Any answered queries from the ask box can be found under tj yaps. Submissions from the dropbox are under tj looks.

Reblogged content from other creators can be accessed through tj reblogs.

Sorted navigation links are under the cut. Feel free to query my ask box if you’re looking for something specific that isn’t listed here.

Safe travels!

HSR:

Anniversary Playthrough Recaps

Returning Player Invitation

Character Build Archive & Build Changelogs

Character Showcases

Simulated Universe Runs

Endgame Challenge Recaps (MoC/PF/AS)

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[tjemegames]

Update: Volubility IV has been completed (yippee!)

Hello, I have returned like I said I would in the off chance that I managed to get the last Pure Fiction star. I’m beyond glad to tell y’all that I was finally able to get my last 80 jades!

This was such a pain, good golly. Still waiting for HoyoLab to update so I can see the total amount of times I attempted the challenge. I’m pretty sure I managed to stay within 100 attempts but I would not be surprised if I surpassed that with just how hard I was struggling to make this work (Future TJ here: ‘twas 77 times, apparently). Thankfully, I’m all done now, and I recovered the tiniest smidge of my pride in the process.

Look at how stupidly strong I had to make Serval for this. This build is kinda bonkers:

Unfortunately, PF is still my nemesis because of the whole lack of consistent multi-target damage dealers thing: Himeko dodged me again, I got Moment of Victory off the standard banner a couple of days ago. Surely she’ll come home soon though (hopium) 🙏🏽

Anyway, that’s all for this little update. I’ve already started working on the next endgame recap post so you should be expecting to see it on your dash right before 2.6 ends. I’ll catch y’all then!

HSR: 2.5.1 AS, 2.5.1 PF, & 2.5.2 MoC Recaps

Hello there, the time for yapping is here once again! Since only the same eight or so people tend to read these, I don't think we need a wall of disclaimers this time around. Going forward you should really only expect to see them when I’ve implemented formatting changes or have something important to mention that pertains to the entirety of the recap post.

2.4 turned me into a slightly casual gamer: dedicated subsections for my casual gaming activities have been added to minimize some of the reintroduction redundancy that was happening in the last recap.

As always, apologies for the image distortion: long photos and Tumblr do not mix well.

You know the drill, lengthy rambling about my endgame experience is under the cut!

2.5.1 Apocalyptic Shadow

Gamer's Instigation is probably my favorite endgame title out of all the ones we've had so far (let's go, gamers!) I'm a big fan of AS, as we know, and this cycle's challenge did not disappoint. I got my twelve stars within a total of four challenge waves!

I tried my hardest to avoid resetting in my first run of stage IV, but even after doing stage III and rereading the enemy details I still needed to feel out Phantylia's mechanics to get a better grasp on the best way to defeat her efficiently. Aventurine's battle was rather cut and dry, so his side only took one attempt.

Aventurines battle was also quite fun. Imagine if his normal boss mechanics allowed for a cumulative dice score across your teammates (the energy buff would probably have to be RNG-based or default to the teammate that contributed the most points in order to counterbalance that), but it would make for a much more enjoyable time when fighting him. It’s been months and I'm still salty about the White Night Chronicles MoC XII—there simply was no reason for that to have been as difficult as it was for me back then. I just…

Anyway, here are the builds I used for IV-I:

Phantylia's battle wasn’t hard, it just required a bit more focus and planning to complete. I did my run with a sustain because I misunderstood the HP situation for defeating the flowers; I interpreted it as the flowers would restore Phantylia’s HP after popping, rather than restoring my team’s HP. In hindsight I shouldn’t have understood it that way because that’s not how the flowers work in her Echo of War, but for some reason that didn’t click at the time. Either way, I got it done with relative ease which is all I’m really asking for these days.

These are the builds I used in IV-II:

Pretend you didn't see Aventurine's sphere—there simply was no better choice. It is what it is, and I will not be addressing it further.

The first 800 jades down (whoop whoop!) I desperately needed them because Feixiao bankrupted me on her way to my roster. It’s my penance for betraying Danny boy.

AS Casual Gaming

AS is way too fun for me not to drop back into it over the course of the patch. I tend to get inspired by runs that I’ve seen on Discord and end up motivated enough to try for better clears and/or test out different teams. This is where I’ll be dropping my ramblings about those attempts. Unfortunately, due to image limitations, I won’t be able to include any build showcases in this section. I did consider making a secondary post specifically for this reason but ultimately decided that it wasn’t a big enough deal to be necessary (if I’m wrong about that, please do let me know. I’m down to yap for as long as y’all are down to listen.)

Chasing a better clear with my original team lineup:

Popped back into the game about four hours after my first round of attempts to start the process of trying for a better clear. The last time I was score chasing in AS I kept a close track of my reset count since it was over the course of a few days, and I kept switching back and forth between my phone and pc. This time I stuck to one day and one device so the detailing is a bit less extensive.

Even though I’ve used DHIL in basically every endgame cycle, I still manage to fumble his gameplay from time to time, my first round of tries being a prime example of that. With that in mind, I figured that taking on Phantylia’s side would be my best shot at increasing my overall score. I set my sights on a 100 point increase and went to town.

First three resets: +66 points, bringing me up to 7260

Next two resets: +4 more points, bringing me up to 7264

Final five resets: no points, DHIL managed to die twice—don’t ask me how that happened because I genuinely do not know

70 points of improvement on the second side. I don’t know if 100 overall points is within reach, but I’ll refocus my efforts on Aventurine’s battle and see what, if anything, can be done there.

First and only three resets: no points, I was hoping that there was a work around with the weakness-locked dice but there wasn’t

Barring making my entire team even faster to get more turns, which I don’t have the relics to do at the moment, this appears to be the end of the line for this clear.

Not a bad set of attempts overall. I was able to get my score up to a grand total of 7264 points within thirteen resets. That’s 138 more points than last AS—didn’t see that happening if I’m being completely honest, some of my builds have actually gotten worse since then. Either way, I’m happy enough with this score to forgo attempting a sustainless clear. Let’s be so for real, my account is not currently in the place to even humor sustainless clears. I’ll file that thought away for later down the line.

Getting Jingliu's Revenge:

Remember a little earlier when I said I was still salty about my experience with White Night Chronicles? Well, since I wasn't having the best of days, I decided to head back into AS so I could feel vindication in the form of beating up Aventurine.

Now, you may be thinking, "TJ, you've already gotten your revenge on Aventurine with Boothill like three times since then." To which I would say yes. However, pew-pew gaming him to death just isn't enough to quell the insatiable beast that is my pettiness for this situation. That being said, I called upon my slightly benched, 35% crit rate having Jingliu to finally enact my revenge; the fact that it's been over five months and I still haven't been able to get Jingliu to 50% crate is actually so painful. I had a whole arc where I was farming wind set Pela and did not manage to get a single replacement piece for Jingliu that entire time. I hate that I love this game.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I regeared Jingliu, rallied the troops (Bronya, RM, & Natasha), and set out for battle:

Victory is MINE! 3608 points is pretty damn solid—my Boothill team only managed to get 73 more points during their run. I feel like I can finally move on from this without any lingering resentment or regrets (yippee!)

Closing Thoughts

That just about wraps up AS for this patch. I was wrong with my guess of having to beat up Yanqing this cycle (a well-deserved break after the 2.5 continuance) but I do hope to see him in this mode sometime in the future. I’m looking forward to seeing what all they manage to incorporate into AS after this patch because the new boss mechanics were both refreshing and interesting. I’m someone who actively likes this mode, so I can only imagine how much of an impact the new features had on those who don’t typically care for it. I hope that they continue to mix up more battles like this in the future.

2.5.1 Pure Fiction

No video for Volubility since I couldn't get past eleven stars: I recorded one but it's not worth posting since I didn't even come close to a full clear. I don't want to waste my time editing and making a thumbnail for content I'm not proud of. Additionally, since I wasn't able to finish and I've since done MoC in between my myriad of PF attempts, I lost the ability to save my build showcases for the aforementioned recording, meaning that I would've been missing an entire section of my video. Truly unfortunate, but it is what it is.

I genuinely had such a bad time trying to do this. I spent far more time than I would've liked trying to twelve star and it sucked just about every bit of enjoyment that it could've out of me. I thought I would have a better chance at beating it after a couple weeks away and doing some character upgrades but apparently it just wasn't in the cards this patch. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Closing Thoughts

720/800 jades is painful but I have no choice other than to accept it and move on. If I somehow manage a miracle before the 2.6.1 reset, I'll be sure to pop in here to provide an update. Otherwise, that's all from me on PF.

2.5.2 Memory of Chaos

No video for Scalegorge Tidalflow either. I did manage to get all twelve stars, but my mental health is currently kicking my ass, so I just don't have it in me to bother with it (or this post really) before the patch ends.

Quick summary off the dome since I didn't write any notes when I did my run; Boothill continues to pay his dues. Feixiao is fun to play with—I might need to pull Robin or build Moze though because I don’t have a proper third slot for her team. I thought I could clear floor XII quicker than seven cycles, but a few rounds of casual gaming did not yield better results. No showcases because I forgot to make them before giving PF another try and I'm drained.

Closing Thoughts

MoC was fine. The exo-toughness mechanic is interesting, and I hope I get a chance to explore it more when I'm feeling better. All 800 jades have been added to the savings for DHIL's cone.

Alrighty friends, that's it for this post. Sorry about the quality drop; my brain is being a nuisance and I'd prefer to put this out now while I have some motivation left to do it—there’s no guarantee that I would've finished it at all if I decided to delay it further. Not my best yap but it’ll do for archiving purposes.

I hope everyone enjoyed the 2.5 endgame cycle (to the best of their ability)! I'll be back in about six weeks when it's time for the next one of these.