#reclamation algorithm

[cerastes]

Me sending literal children to scavenge for wood, stone and iron in the deadly Sargonian deserts for days on nothing but a single can of Mon3tr Energy.

[dreadark]

finally

bad apple in arknights

[hexdrake]

Ulpianus's third skill is highly unusual even among the lockpicking-enabled operators, and makes him extremely good for picking a single hard to reach door. Unlike Kafka, Goldenglow, and Wiš'adel, you don't need to worry as much about placement, because he occupies the entire line of his attack during the initial activation.

However, it has some weirdness to it. Basically, when Ulpianus activates his skill, he occupies the six squares in front of him (allowing him to break blocks in any of the seven squares in front of him), but the damage itself does not reach the full distance. The damage is an area attack with radius 1.8 centered on the first enemy (or resource node) he hits in his dash. This means that you can break walls with the following rules:

As long as there is at most one tile between his first target (be it an enemy or a resource node) and the wall, it will break. If there's a two-block gap, he can't touch it.

This means that he can be used very similarly to Kafka (and in fact breaks at the same range as her, and a little further potentially), but as he's not a fast-redeploy, he won't be able to do it more than once or maybe twice per entry into a map. However, he can break walls blocked by further gaps than her, and can potentially do some tricksy stuff Goldenglow and Wishie can't, so it's definitely worth keeping in mind if you have him.

(Thank you @hero-king-baybe for the recordings! I don't have Ulpianus, so him getting this footage was very helpful.)

[cogitxtio]

The lords ameer keep sending troops at us as if we haven't sent them packing with their tails between their legs two or three times already. I'm out here in a full-body outfit in the blazing desert sun. What makes you think I know fear?

[siriannatan]

This is how 430 days in RA looks like (I had to put this monstrosity out there)

I'm just showing off I guess

[the-cornuthaum]

how the fuck does hypergryph expect people without a minimum one of archetto or exusiai plus the free Krooster to get into Forbidden Tsalimashtu?

I finally beat the damn mountain pass but it was full of truly baffling decisions - how are you meant to get the hitcount needed otherwise?

[silicacid]

santet

[lanymme]

Okay I’m back with more Reclamation Algorithm tips. People generally seem to know how well ops like Phantom and Silverash perform in this mode, but here��s some of my operator recs:

1. Magallan. Magallan with S1 is immensely useful because each 3 DP cost drone gives you a 3x3 area of vision, and the drones being camouflaged after deployment means that they are quite safe. Extremely useful for scouting out resources to save time, CC’ing the huntable deer so you can kill them with less force investment, and controlling the hordes of enemies in the raids.

2. Specter Alter. She’s a hard-carry in this mode. You can place her down quite safely most of the time to bait dangerous enemies and provide continuous damage in high-traffic areas. You can almost solo Raids that rely on hordes of basic enemies with her combination of true AOE damage, CC, and low DP cost. She’s very strong.

3. Ceobe. Getting access to higher tiers of collection drones is extremely important, but stone and iron deposits both have very high defense. That, conveniently, makes them Ceobe food. Really useful for getting your first 3 iron to start making Executive-tier resources collectors, which can then take over for her. Worth the 10 smoothie points to help kickstart your run.

4. Ambriel. She provides a ton of value and map control thanks to her global range. You can use fog of war to help you target select: strong synergy with Magallan and Phantom. Some of the food enemies are a bit too dangerous or to be solo’d by an FRD like phantom: Ambriel makes up the difference.

5. Gavial Alter. Any unit that can change block is extremely useful in this mode to help gather more resources. With S3, she can increase her block to 5, and do immense damage to the resource deposit she’s farming: she can just about solo-farm a single patch of wood, and carry almost all of it by herself.

6. Mr. Nothing. If you have him already, he can be helpful. He has a quick redeploy timer and can give himself 2 block. Helpful when you can’t rely on resource harvesting drones yet, and his sort of heavy-duty FRD status can help him 1v1 some of the enemies that can’t be taken out in one deployment of an FRD.

7. Utage. Remarkably useful against enemies like Defense Crushers that threaten your resource harvesting drones.

[gubbles-owo]

we are under fucking attack

[ricketynotch2]

I wish Arknights did a better job of indicating which this are more endgame oriented, I got excited for both RA2 and Trials for Navigator only to realize I can barely access either of their content right now

[greythroat]

@bignian

Idk if you’re serious but for anyone who wants them: Fight all raids outside of headquarters (some maps are better than others). It’s easier and you don’t have to make any walls. Do the town nodes (you need to find a special structure and kill it) for consistent wood+stone dispatches that don’t cost act. If you get stuck on any story missions use https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1Oimw2-LXle0PpvNlkpFM2C9QbNckIcMIbGX0rIPjWhs/htmlview?pli=1 and look it up on bilibili. Use the -6 cost food on flagbearers. Once you have more resources the high ground platforms and scout towers are useful in missions. Look around maps for secret areas (get there by destroying decoy wall). Do hard stuff like story bosses and killing the olden keystone on a day “2 days from calculation” so you can save scum.

As for operators have Texas and Yato alter. Other good picks include Phantom, April and trapmasters for revealing + Reed alter, Eyjafjalla, and Mizuki for battles + Surtr for everything. Mlynar is probably great in RA but I don’t have him.

[cerastes]

OKAY, Reclamation Algorithm 2.

The first RA was a more arcade experience with meta progression: You had runs lasting only a few days, and you'd have to defend against a final boss horde in a much smaller overall map. Likewise, your resource acquisition was also much more explosive, such as getting a couple of Clash of Clans and other such resource-rich maps almost every run. You could only carry a few items other than what you had built on your base between runs, meaning that blowing up everything and saving a couple of things between runs was the way to go.

I think RA2 is easier overall than RA1 simply because it's a continuous, full-on mode that doesn't have an arcade, short-run based format. It goes on for as long as you play. Resource acquisition is slower because of its longer form nature, but it also does not at all pressure you with Linebreaker day 14 for example. Plus, the Energy System this time is much easier to manage, since you need Two Pops or Three Pops of Energy Drink to field an entire squad of 6 and under or 7 and above, respectively, whereas RA1 needed you to feed individual units from a Fountain of Energy Drink. That's not to say everything is easier; the Priestess and the Troubadour are much more challenging than anything RA1 threw at you -- Linebreaker, Ruinbringer, and Al-Rafiq --, and while the new horde bosses are fun, they are on about the same difficulty as those three, who are more or less tests of RA mechanics and if you are using them or not more than anything.

Make no mistake, this is ENDGAME endgame, especially in regards to Priestess and Troubadour, since you have to beat them in one Day -- two attempts at the map in which your progress is saved between attempts, BUT in which you can only use each unit once, so if you want to use 12 units per attempt, that'd be 24 units you think are up to par -- and they bring mean gimmicks that can be curbed somewhat by the season in which you fight them, but not entirely, and are still quite formidable even with the counter season. They were some of my favorite parts of the mode, personally, because not only is it a big, harsh challenge, it also reinforces the World Of Adventure nature of Terra: Even though they are unaligned with any of the big factions, you still have REALLY strong individuals roaming the land.

I think the main difficulty for a lot of people will come from choice overload: Arknights is already a game with a lot of player expression and a focus on gameplay, both aspects not at all the norm with gacha games and thus not what a lot of gacha gamers are used to, and while main content is kept very accessible to all skill levels, they do provide truly endgame challenges that can be quite demanding in terms of skill, for players that do dabble in the depth of player expression and team building that Arknights offers, such as High Multiplier (Waves/Natures) Integrated Strategies and 26+ Risk Contingency Contract.

This preamble is to say, Reclamation Algorithm has even more player expression and thus potential options for you to use. You have so, so many more tools other than just your Operators that a lot of people just don’t know what to do with them, hence why I think so many people find it so much harder than it truly is. Food for a myriad of different stat boosts and perks, structures to mold maps and enemy routing at your will, the ability to create your own ranged tiles or throw 5-block fridges at your enemies, purposefully overpowered tools like stun mines and supply stations at your beck and call, you can do so much in RA, and for some people, maybe it’s too much. Like an open world game does for some people, the sheer vastness of your options in RA2 might just blind and overwhelm some, especially since the average gacha player is very casual (and that’s not in the slightest an insult), and the average AK player watches clear guides without really understanding why the strat in the guide worked. Thus, in a mode in which player expression is king, the player that barely interacts with the baseline mechanics of the game, let alone those exclusive to RA, is not even part of the kingdom. For me personally, RA1 clicked the moment I realized just how nightmarishly strong the player is if they use food and structures, and after that, it was a non-stop streak of wins (unbroken in RA2 since RA1, too).

My advice to anyone trying to seriously get into RA2 is to just experiment as much as you can with anything that even remotely calls to you: Is there a unit you like a lot, like say, Bibeak? Well what if you give her insane attack, bulk and infinite SP to spam her skills? Food that buffs ATK, 2 shield generators and 2 supply stations on Bibeak makes this a reality. You wish Yato Kirin had no DP cost whatsoever? There’s food that makes her DP cost 0 no matter how many times you deploy her. You wonder what it’d be like for Eunectes to have 3 Block? Food does that. You think a particular map would be much more manageable if you could just have a Corrupting Heart-buffed 5-Block Mudrock in a particular chokepoint with no ranged tiles? You make your own ranged tile and then give Food to Mudrock to get her to 5 Block, or maybe 3 Block is enough, and you’d rather she has 75% extra Def and 35 more Res instead to make her truly unkillable, well, food does that too.

You just need to dabble into the possibilities a bit before it becomes crystal clear just how insane you can get.

[dreadark]

also have no clue if this is useful to anyone but I recorded all the cutscenes of fire within the sand in case you didn't have a free ~20 hours to sink into reclamation algorithm (why is this time limited???)

playlist (it's in order) (ignore the names)

this doesn't include the text-only events so you still have to reference the wiki... here for the text and here for the overall order of events

[hexdrake]

This is barely a tip, but it's something that a lot of people haven't seen. You can now activate "Peaceful Mode" in Reclamation Algorithm, letting you play a much less difficult version of the mode where you explore and build up resources at your own pace. If you bounced off RA2 the first time, this might be the thing for you!

To turn on this difficulty, hit the little circle-and-arrows symbol next to the start button on the main RA2 screen.

(I've turned raids off myself lately because I've been super fixated on pedigree slug raising and racing).

[cogitxtio]

Rhodes Island's operators have done a wonderful job seeking out and quickly internalizing agricultural knowledge from our new Yanese guests, both Shu's timeless wisdom and Wanqing's hard-earned hands-on experience. From my discussions with them, they've integrated well aboard the landship and feel much more welcome than the average guest, a win-win for everyone's well-being (and also their stomachs).

However, this rapid dissemination of farming expertise has caused one very small and entirely unforeseen issue:

What the hell do I do with all this rice?

[yukiranine]

Pest control :)