Ergonomicsheep
Newbie
- Apr 25, 2022
- 77
- 111
And here we are at last. Helichurl mode completed, even with the advisory. All Breedable girls collected, both cities fallen. I didn't upgrade Mondstatd to full because of the nun gate (addressed below) but I got pretty damn far.
Overall, there was a lot of good stuff in this update. Nycto churls not being on food is one such good mechanic, sacrificing hilichurls manually being another. A few issues I think need to be addressed however:
1: Hilichurls eating food when sent to live in breeding farms and cities. Either they shouldn't cost anything, or they need to be sacrificeable before you reach 100%, because as it stands, having to use unusual hilichurls to slowly sieve them out of the city for the purpose of sacrificing them so I don't starve wasn't a pleasant thing.
2: We really need to either establish a selective breeding program for humans such as nuns and such, because that last 40 nuns needed for mondstatd city became pretty much impossible due to there being only three places on the map you could collect nuns from, and one of them was the city itself (which stopped being harvestable after the second upgrade). Either that, or there needs to be work done about how often your captured girls die off, because the nuns expiring before I could hit that massive wall of 40 was..unpleasant, to say the least. I think the cost itself is okayish, but the system as it is punishes you for not having the 40 nuns collected before you start upgrading the city. Perhaps the brothel update can cover this, but as it stands, it's kinda annoying to be unable to finish off the city without just spamming turns at the end and hoping you generate more nuns than die.
3: The Nycto resource doesn't seem to have anything that lowers the number instead of raises it, we kinda need a dump for this unless this is an intentional method of making players endlessly pump out ley line branches. Perhaps tie it to a future breeding program, or stuff like the Riftwolves update?
4: Unless this is an intentional punishment for bad play on the part of the player, we need some way of not killing or otherwise finding a way to recover special NPC's. By the time I was done conquering mondstatd and started busting up Liyue I just started murdering them because using anyone with capture mechanics wasn't worth my time. Perhaps some sort of bounty system? Or attach it to the future "Summon enemies" update?
5: Do nodes contribute resources if occupied? This isn't clearly stated, and other than maiden captures, I'm unsure if I should be spamming sweeps or not.
6: There were odd spikes in hilichurl units that I noticed, and I'm not sure if that was because captured cities were producing them or there was some sort of boost I was unaware of. My hydro slime production seemed to spike in the hundreds seemingly out of nowhere, which while it was good for my later lawachurls, left me highly perplexed. I don't know if this was a bug or an intended mechanic, but if intentional, this should be communicated better to the player.
With those out of the way, some things I noticed while playing:
If you plan to corrupt one of the capturable girls at any point, don't wait until they are broken. Corrupting broken visions is worse than corrupting full visions, because it lowers breeding chances. In small characters like fischl, you can't get mitachurls at all until much later if at all if you corrupt a broken one.
Slimes. If you have a problem with any mob in the game, spam slimes. Xianyun went down like a sack of shit because I put full anemo slime shields on two Nycto mitachurls and unleashed them on her. You should basically have someone whose only job is to produce anemo slimes for you for the entirety of mondstatd, because get some of those set up and there is nothing they can do to you.
I really liked the updated graphics for the cities once you maxed them out (I checked a completed file prior to starting hell). Well done on that part.
If you want to get Masks for brainwashing breeders, take a bunch of mitachurls and use the autobattle function (the one that skips combat) on enemies like elite adventurers. They are damn near mandatory if you want to not spend ungodly amounts of time micromanaging your girls, as they remove elemental drain while breeding. (They could use some animations though, but its not a dealbreaker.)
Torture no longer appears to break down lumine, so previous advice about using it to corrupt her is now defunct. As of this version, it does not appear that there is any way to break her. (Though, for those concerned, the dev has previously stated there will be a future update that handles her corruption, so this was an accidental method to cause it anyway.)
The recapture scene for lumine was wonderful. Excellent job.
I don't think I'm going to play on hellichurl difficulty again, at least until all nations are eventually done. To summarize my experience with hell...
Step one: Spend 100 turns in Mondstatd, desperately praying I don't get the rage gauge to Noel level
Step two: Try harder fights every so often, get stomped because enemy goes "Lolno" to anything below hyper micromanaged samachurls or lawachurls, reload
Step three: Get Lawachurls
Step four: March on cities like a line of panzer tanks, cracking skulls and taking maidens. Laugh.
It was fun actually needing lawachurls to win most fights (without slime spam, anyway) but man did it mean that I basically refused to look at Liyue, right up until the first elite Xia showed up, then I charged in and planted samachurls up in the wharf area to lock them from spawning. After that, I basically ignored Liyue until I had Jean.
Hard is a maybe, if I'm feeling particularly plucky (maybe post Rukka? We will see) but not hell again. Micromanaging my samachurls to make a wall of plant mines was a pain.
Still, I don't regret the playthrough. I can officially say now that the game is amazing on all difficulties, not just easy mode.
I eagerly await the next nations. Best of luck Theofrad.
Overall, there was a lot of good stuff in this update. Nycto churls not being on food is one such good mechanic, sacrificing hilichurls manually being another. A few issues I think need to be addressed however:
1: Hilichurls eating food when sent to live in breeding farms and cities. Either they shouldn't cost anything, or they need to be sacrificeable before you reach 100%, because as it stands, having to use unusual hilichurls to slowly sieve them out of the city for the purpose of sacrificing them so I don't starve wasn't a pleasant thing.
2: We really need to either establish a selective breeding program for humans such as nuns and such, because that last 40 nuns needed for mondstatd city became pretty much impossible due to there being only three places on the map you could collect nuns from, and one of them was the city itself (which stopped being harvestable after the second upgrade). Either that, or there needs to be work done about how often your captured girls die off, because the nuns expiring before I could hit that massive wall of 40 was..unpleasant, to say the least. I think the cost itself is okayish, but the system as it is punishes you for not having the 40 nuns collected before you start upgrading the city. Perhaps the brothel update can cover this, but as it stands, it's kinda annoying to be unable to finish off the city without just spamming turns at the end and hoping you generate more nuns than die.
3: The Nycto resource doesn't seem to have anything that lowers the number instead of raises it, we kinda need a dump for this unless this is an intentional method of making players endlessly pump out ley line branches. Perhaps tie it to a future breeding program, or stuff like the Riftwolves update?
4: Unless this is an intentional punishment for bad play on the part of the player, we need some way of not killing or otherwise finding a way to recover special NPC's. By the time I was done conquering mondstatd and started busting up Liyue I just started murdering them because using anyone with capture mechanics wasn't worth my time. Perhaps some sort of bounty system? Or attach it to the future "Summon enemies" update?
5: Do nodes contribute resources if occupied? This isn't clearly stated, and other than maiden captures, I'm unsure if I should be spamming sweeps or not.
6: There were odd spikes in hilichurl units that I noticed, and I'm not sure if that was because captured cities were producing them or there was some sort of boost I was unaware of. My hydro slime production seemed to spike in the hundreds seemingly out of nowhere, which while it was good for my later lawachurls, left me highly perplexed. I don't know if this was a bug or an intended mechanic, but if intentional, this should be communicated better to the player.
With those out of the way, some things I noticed while playing:
If you plan to corrupt one of the capturable girls at any point, don't wait until they are broken. Corrupting broken visions is worse than corrupting full visions, because it lowers breeding chances. In small characters like fischl, you can't get mitachurls at all until much later if at all if you corrupt a broken one.
Slimes. If you have a problem with any mob in the game, spam slimes. Xianyun went down like a sack of shit because I put full anemo slime shields on two Nycto mitachurls and unleashed them on her. You should basically have someone whose only job is to produce anemo slimes for you for the entirety of mondstatd, because get some of those set up and there is nothing they can do to you.
I really liked the updated graphics for the cities once you maxed them out (I checked a completed file prior to starting hell). Well done on that part.
If you want to get Masks for brainwashing breeders, take a bunch of mitachurls and use the autobattle function (the one that skips combat) on enemies like elite adventurers. They are damn near mandatory if you want to not spend ungodly amounts of time micromanaging your girls, as they remove elemental drain while breeding. (They could use some animations though, but its not a dealbreaker.)
Torture no longer appears to break down lumine, so previous advice about using it to corrupt her is now defunct. As of this version, it does not appear that there is any way to break her. (Though, for those concerned, the dev has previously stated there will be a future update that handles her corruption, so this was an accidental method to cause it anyway.)
The recapture scene for lumine was wonderful. Excellent job.
I don't think I'm going to play on hellichurl difficulty again, at least until all nations are eventually done. To summarize my experience with hell...
Step one: Spend 100 turns in Mondstatd, desperately praying I don't get the rage gauge to Noel level
Step two: Try harder fights every so often, get stomped because enemy goes "Lolno" to anything below hyper micromanaged samachurls or lawachurls, reload
Step three: Get Lawachurls
Step four: March on cities like a line of panzer tanks, cracking skulls and taking maidens. Laugh.
It was fun actually needing lawachurls to win most fights (without slime spam, anyway) but man did it mean that I basically refused to look at Liyue, right up until the first elite Xia showed up, then I charged in and planted samachurls up in the wharf area to lock them from spawning. After that, I basically ignored Liyue until I had Jean.
Hard is a maybe, if I'm feeling particularly plucky (maybe post Rukka? We will see) but not hell again. Micromanaging my samachurls to make a wall of plant mines was a pain.
Still, I don't regret the playthrough. I can officially say now that the game is amazing on all difficulties, not just easy mode.
I eagerly await the next nations. Best of luck Theofrad.
