#integrated strategies

[oltammefru]

There's this one detail in the IS4 floor4 stage "Collapsals' Afternoon" I fucking love.

Specifically the part of the stage where Collapsed Constructs begin flying from one end of the map to the other in intricateish patterns.

Now what's up with that?

They're fucking birds now. After spending too long witnessing The Horrors and having their programming overwritten and having gained something like sentience they've decided actually being a Beachbrella icefield surveillance drone sucks shit I Want To Be A Bird And Fly Around In Patterns With My Buddies Now. And became birds they did.

[the-cornuthaum]

So we got the stats for IS3 today, with its runtime officially over.

0.16% of doctors collected all relics.

And we all fucking know why. Because of head-ass relics like Pathfinder Fin (you will literally never get this if you don't play with the Dice squad), Silver Forks and Cathedral Puzzle.

This got me to think long and hard about why I ended up *not* 100%ing all of IS3 - I never got the Pathfinder Fin even after I did All Endings All Squads before the content expansion, and I just couldn't make myself grind more dice squad (which I did not enjoy, as the dice mechanic largely sucked until the content expansion)

Goodbye IS3. You were in so many ways a huge improvement over IS2. No longer did we have to do 5-6 runs just to get to see the ending 3 or 4 encounter chain happen once. The maps were much faster and generally more challenging. You had a much more fleshed-out difficulty system. Better relics that led to more fun combos.

Goodbye IS3. You were a fucking disappointment full of glaringly half-baked implementations and poor design decisions. Whether it was the completely asinine unlock requirements for some of your relics, the completely binary light mechanic where you either had 100 light or no light as far as curses went, the poorly laid out difficulty curve (+1 hope cost, literally the single biggest swing, at level 4? rather than the nothingburgers that they put at 13 and 14?), two of the worst bosses in all of Arknights (I'm looking at you, The Last Knight and Izumik) and generally the lingering feeling that you could have been SO much better if only they'd actually put more thought into the supporting mechanics for each run.

I will miss you, but not nearly as much as I could have.

[xoyvsstuffs]

something shown on and a result of a recent stream by @cerastes

[clarste]

This bit from Skadi's memory mapping in IS3 is the most adorable thing in the entire game, imo.

Transcript:

The hatchlings seem afraid to leave the water. Their immature anatomies find the dryness uncomfortable. After some trial and error, they choose to attach themselves to the rock wall, curiously scanning the world above the surface with their visual organs. Skadi takes out a lyre, tunes it, and begins playing. She sings. It is a song that knows neither trouble nor sorrow. It is full of love and kindness. The hatchlings stretch out and sing along with their developing organs.

[cerastes]

It’s great that IS4 will have better distributed and more “fun” oriented intensifiers (called ‘Natures’ in this case, until they release an official term, if they change it). Waves in IS3 were, to be frank, rather shoddily implemented, starting with the way Arts damage gets kneecapped horribly bad. In IS4, it’s instead a general, smaller Damage Reduction for both Phys and Arts.

The Hope handicap in IS3 was the reason a good amount of people didn’t really even try or stuck to People Skills squad: it was too early, too much

3* non-reserves cost 1 Hope. That immediately changes how IS is played at a fundamental level: Kroos 3* is a great addition to any team because of her innate good damage, spinach compatibility, and 0 cost… But is she worth that precious 1 Hope when your 6* mainliners will cost a whooping 7 Hope? Suddenly that Reserve Sniper seems a whole lot better at 0 cost. It’s a pretty big ask at Waves 4: Even if you only consider Waves 7 as the max difficulty for the purposes of scoring, that’s still way early to throw such a huge change into the mix. Nature 6 seems more apt, and note it only affects 4* and up. I think it’s a step in the right direction; at Waves 4, using Reserves is fine, but at Waves 13 and up, by the time enemies receive their Floor 2 buffs, that’s already a stat heft the Reserves will struggle to compete with, and they have no Skill to even the field. Yes, Waves 8 and above is flexing and testing your own limits, but this can and should also be fun, and getting Hope-starved so badly is a huge turn off to a lot of people, so they use People Skills squad. Then they get bored because using anything but People Skills squad on Waves 4 and above means dealing with the Hope drought.

I also would like if they made Natures more apparent in the UI tbh. This is definitely not an HG blunder, but a concerning amount of people didn’t know (maybe don’t know) that there’s a ladder of difficulties in IS3, because AK players hate reading or are allergic to tutorial text or some other phenomenon, so I had plenty of anons saying IS3 was easier than IS2 and in the same ask asking what these Waves I spoke of were.

All in all, I hope IS4 ends up feeling better than IS3. I do like IS3, but it was a bit of a letdown, to be dorothy frank. I think the Seaborn aesthetic was not really used to its fullest (maps are boring slates of light blue with a pretty boring bgm). It was fun grinding out the Week 1 Waves 15 clear, but after that, it didn’t grab me nearly as hard as IS2 did with it’s excellent aesthetic and replayability.

When it comes to bosses and minibosses: IS3 minibosses are kiiiinda mid. IS2’s Golem and Jetman are fun, the Clown was scary depending on your build, the… Shooty dude was mid, and IS3 midbosses feel like him for the most part.

I like Highmore Boss more than Phantom Boss, I think Highmore is a really good boss and map. Last Knight is the single most miserable boss to fight in the game and very boring even when you know what to do, and somehow worse than Big Sad Lock. Ishar-mla is fine, not bad, not very good, just fine, which is a bit of a letdown for me, considering Mouthpiece is one of my favorite bosses in the game. Jury’s still out on Boss #4, hope it’s good, Playwright isn’t phenomenal but he’s good.

My thoughts on the state of IS3. Though these are various criticisms I have for it, I do wish to note: it’s still a fun mode, and I think a great learning experience: balancing a roguelike or roguelite is not easy and it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be, but it’s still a fun game mode.

[lemon-dokuro]

Favourite thing to do in IS4: triggering "change node to X" foldartals on nodes that already are that thing

[panetonegalactico]

Top 10 things to do in Sami:

#3 Get styled on by a dinosaur moonwalking into your objective point

[lanymme]

So far my time with IS4 has been pretty good. The aesthetic is cool, foldartals are an incredible mechanic, I like all the basic mechanics and in a lot of ways feel like it's an improvement from IS3.

However. There's some really fucked-up shit in this game mode.

I have some minor complaints, like how so many stages feel like hard checks for specific operators, or how a bunch of the early stages feel extremely unfair and can be pretty much unwinnable depending on your starting conditions.

I really want to talk about the Bosky Passage though. Yesterday I lost a run to it because it dropped my deployment count to 2, and did not inform me of this before I chose a stage with two blue box paths that regularly drained the health of your operators.

This is, frankly, unacceptable game design. I had zero counterplay for this stage, and no way of predicting what it would be. I can accept having to deal with tough conditions for some extra stage rewards. I can understand harsh, restrictive conditions that demands difficult choices.

Not giving you the information on what has changed feels like poor game design. Straight-up.

There might be something I'm missing in this equation, but as it stands to me now, this is a pretty serious black mark on the mode.

[superheavyloadermech]

Chongyue Tiles

[stealthpotato]

After getting 4 wins in IS4 now from difficulties 0-3 I genuinely cannot understand the stupid ass decision they made to force us to start on difficulty 0 with -40% rewards (and very importantly, tree upgrades) when there's genuinely no meaningful difficulty change between those 4 difficulties at all and difficulty 3 is the real baseline difficulty of the mode which is easier than difficulty 0 because of all the buffs you get. It all just ends up with the start of IS4 being us getting our teeth kicked in for scraps of XP, for literally no reason other than the devs decided to gate getting more XP behind winning a few times, which for most people takes farming some XP first...

[honewys]

mizuki!! ☔

[oltammefru]

Me when I'm asked to name 1.5 arknights operators.

[the-cornuthaum]

IS players be like: "oh no I am dying help i have not gotten a single medic voucher since floor 1, this poison mist is killing me, woe is me, all I had were these 8 supporter tickets"

please for the love of god, fellows, if you play IS enough, hear me out and heed my advice and BUILD YOUR QUERCUS yes that's right you want to BUILD THE DRUID OF GODDODIN she is A BETTER MEDIC THAN MOST MEDICS and will CASUALLY KEEP YOUR SQUAD ALIVE

how? why? she has SO MUCH SHELTER on units above 70% hp and then also permanent healing uptime because her s1 is indefinite so please my brethren in christ and my brethren in not-christ-but-just-IS I beg you

build your quercus. also kazemaru because #kazemarugang

[dappersheep]

I was set to clearing all of IS4's endings and seeing as the entries found in Time-Carved Steleforest aren't readily available anywhere, decided I'd share at least my favorite ending. Enjoy!

Part 1: Terra Reborn

Following the scattered fragments in his memories, Mizuki searches for mankind’s last haven.

In these memories, humans have not gone extinct, and one last city remains standing on land.

For a human, going to the human city is a foregone conclusion hardly worth mentioning.

With such thoughts in mind, he walks onto the land, alone.

…

The Seaborn have completely transformed the entire continent.

There is no more Originium, no more barrens.

As far as the eye can see, the entire land has become a verdant expanse, all manner of plants teeming with life. Animals prance across the wilds and soar through the skies in packs, partaking freely of the land’s inexhaustible bounty.

After crossing a stream and climbing a hill, Mizuki feels a tinge of weariness and hunger, so he plucks a few fruits from the plants and pops them straight into his mouth.

The Seaborn have no need to taste their food, but these fruits have clearly retained their original taste. The only difference is, they are even more delicious, and more filling.

Previously, having enough to eat and drink was one of the few pursuits life afforded him; but now, such an ideal can easily be fulfilled by simply extending one’s hand—

Suddenly, he hears a loud rumble in the distance. A mountain range rises from the ground and begins to wander across the land.

The Seaborn’s departure was like a beacon, rousing these ancient progenitors from their slumber. The land to them is both familiar and foreign. They explore the flowers, plants, and trees before them with a mix of suspicion and curiosity.

When the Feranmut vanishes, Mizuki once again sets off on his journey to find the city.

He recalls the way humans identify one another, that they have various convenient and conspicuous ways of drawing borders and forming cohorts.

But even after walking for a long time, Mizuki does not even happen across a single ‘road’.

‘Did I remember wrong?’ He cannot help but to doubt himself, then scratches his head, trying his best to recall his impression of humans over the millenia.

However, apart from the human who brought him into the laboratory and the human he trusted the most, his memory contains only a hazy impression of that city’s towering walls.

Finally, he comes up with a brute-force method.

‘If I can’t find them, then I will have them come to me.’

He builds and lights fires in several prominent places, carves messages of kindness in every human script he can remember, and then climbs a tall mountain where he can see all the fires to await someone to answer his call.

…

Finally, the moment Mizuki was waiting for has come.

A Liberi finds a way to the mountain under the cover of darkness and holds a knife to his neck, asking him questions in a Victorian tongue laced the flavors of many nations.

Most importantly, her ensemble sports a tower-shaped epaulet with a small line of characters engraved on its lowest part.

A name that lingered on the tip of his tongue thousands of times suddenly wells up in Mizuki’s heart:

Rhodes Island.

[burstfoot]

FISH STRONG IS2 Calamity (Ursus Chachek, +40% HP, +40% ATK, +40% DEF) run with Irene + Abyssals squad ONLY A lot of collectibles have no effect with this squad (I never want to see + squad size relics again), but I happened to get Wrath of Siracusans, Hand of Shredder, Fatal Bolts - Divine Speed, and Bend Spears - Deathmatch which all together gave me enough DPS to finish off Phantom with Skadi pretty easily! The only thing better I could've hoped for was some SP regen to get Irene's s3 up away from enemies, with the def reduction from Bend Spears she was tissue paper, LOL

[cerastes]

Thoughts about IS3

I love IS2, and I love IS3. I completed Surging Waves 15 on week 1, and am now trudging to do a 100% completion of IS3, as I did with IS2. I played IS2 a lot, and I will be playing IS3 a lot. With this in mind, I’ve had a lot of thoughts regarding IS3, by itself and as a successor to IS2. I will be sharing these thoughts.

The balancing on IS3 is done very well, because the Surging Waves is a good system. Some may know it as “Intensity” or “Heat”, but Surging Waves is a concept often used in modern Roguelikes to add different modifiers to the base systems and balance of a Roguelike to further increase replay value. The fundamental design of IS3 is easier than IS2, but with Waves, it becomes harder than IS2. This is a good thing: IS3 is more welcoming than IS2 to newcomers both to the game as a whole and to endgame content. You can tackle Waves 0 as a mid-range player, as long as you have basic understanding of building a team, without much difficulty. The clear rates of IS3, visible in the game itself, are pretty high already, and I see a lot of people say they feel IS3 is easier than IS2. I agree with the sentiment, the base balancing of IS3 is much less demanding than IS2, but as you ascend the waves, it becomes significantly harder than IS2 between the slowly ascending stat heft as well as the extra conditions.

Team building flexibility is far more permissible in IS3 than IS2. IS2 had this problem where a Berry pick (Honeyberry or Mulberry) as a Medic was pretty much always the correct choice due to the sheer amount of Nervous Impairment that the game dishes out, with almost every IS2 exclusive enemy and two out of the four bosses inflicting it in heavy quantities. Not only that, but the very nature of Nervous Impairment as a type of Elemental damage is particularly dangerous: Heavy burst damage plus several seconds of Stun compromise your defense and offense significantly! In IS3, on the other hand, there’s more varied types of Elemental Damage, with the main type being Corrosion: Indeed, plenty of enemies inflict Corrosion, but Corrosion as a type of Elemental damage allows for FAR more flexibility in team building: A Berry is suddenly not always the right choice, they remain VERY good choices, but not the Best choices necessarily when gauging where to put your Hope. Likewise, Crowd Control-capable Operators, irregular range Operators, and other such characters are all good choices in IS3 due to deliberate enemy design and tile placement that makes them great to have, as opposed to the fundamentally simplistic, rudimentary style of map design seen in IS2 that, by nature, benefited Marksman (AA) Snipers heavily.

Bosses have a unified design philosophy of “Alternate Bulk”. Instead of making stat sticks in order to deal with burst damage compositions and strategies, they instead give them a range of base stats not far removed from the IS2 final bosses, instead opting to give them different ways to mitigate damage that can be circumvented by the player one way or another in order to gain an advantage: Highmore has high HP but low DEF, however, she also significantly cripples the ASPD of nearby units (-60 phase 1, -80 phase 2) and has multi-target with Corrosion damage in order to prevent just easily being able to absorb her hits with one superbuffed tank (3 targets phase 1, 5 targets phase 2). The Last Knight has a whooping 4000 Defense that can be reduced to a paltry 800 with a special item, much like how you could remove the Big Sad Lock’s regen with an item and he Freezes units that damage him twice in the space of 2 seconds (4 seconds under 25% HP), however, he moves very slowly, has to work through a bunch of Rubble, moves ONLY in a straight line, and is susceptible to every status effect in the game except Silence. Skadi seems straightforward at first, but she necessitates you to place your units in specific tiles to slow down her SP charge, and if it fills, she transforms into Ishar’mla, and He must be defeated to turn Him back, all the while gaining access to a fast triple target 4-tile range True Damage autoattack. This all means that bosses come with their own counters and mechanics to deal with, but not invalidate, burst damage: Burst damage compositions are still very strong! In fact, if you get lucky with items, you can really just burst right through their mechanics all unga bunga style, but even if you don’t win the item lottery, a good burst composition will still pay great dividends, it’s just, the game wants you to sub-build something else alongside your burst composition! It can be bulk, it can be crowd control, it can be global control, it can be sustained damage, anything! This not only incentivizes varied builds, it rewards playing the game in your own desired way instead of always rewarding burst, all without actually weakening or invalidating burst. Coming from a mobile game, this is fantastic game design not usually seen in that sector of the industry, with mobile games usually taking a heavy-handed “completely negate a style of play” approach to ‘balancing’ whether long-term or for gimmicks.

It’s all actually fresh new maps. I’m astounded, because I thought IS3 was going to be Mostly IS2 But With A Couple New Maps And A Creepy And Wet Coat Of Paint, the way IS2 was IS1 But With A Couple New Maps And A Creepy And French Coat Of Paint. Nope, they legit just made a whole slew of new maps. I wouldn’t have minded IS2 2 but I am very very happy that IS3 is its own thing!

The Squads are still kind of lopsided. Not all Squads are made equal, and I don’t think they were meant to be, but I also don’t think they were meant to be this unequal. In IS2, Resource Squad, Leader Squad, and Class-specific Squads blew the other Squads out of the water pretty badly. In IS3, the three new Squads are pretty damn good, and I think it has to do with the fact that you can upgrade them with the all-new talent tree whereas... You Can’t Do That with the other Squads. This is a very weird decision, because the three new Squads are very very strong if played with their strengths in mind, further incentivized by the new systems like Surging Waves, Dice, Light, Caches, and Wish Fulfillment. For instance, one of the few decisions I dislike about Surging Waves is the fact that Waves 4 increases Hope cost of everything 3 Stars and above by 1... This is huge! That single increase in price makes 3 Stars that aren’t Reserves cost 1 Hope! It’s a pretty massive game-changer in terms of building and early run economy! I would’ve made that something like Waves 7 or 8 personally, but it’s very early at Waves 4. However, People-Oriented Squad complete gets rid of it, while still offering its discounted Promotion costs. I’ll be honest, I don’t play Waves 4 and above if it isn’t People-Oriented as of the making of this post, because being able to Not deal with that is simply too strong. And if I wasn’t doing that, I’d definitely grab either of the two new Squads to try and make up for it in other areas, and if not those, the Class-specific Squads, again, for Hope efficiency. I wish they would make the other Squads a bit more appealing or upgradable. They aren’t unplayable by any means, but I think there’s a clear disparity in potency. *I understand part of this is also because my strategy is based on Hope-efficiency, but putting that aside, I do believe there’s a disparity in potency, even with my possible bias.

These are my main thoughts regarding IS3. I’ve been enjoying the game mode a lot and I can’t wait to experiment more with it.