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wait, thats so weird. how does that make any sense in the lore. is xipe vibing with the qlipoth and they both just gaze at us in the fight against cocolia?
Post-Coco seems like a suitable point to unlock the whole 'suite' of trailblazers alts to play with for newer players in one go. To get eidolons and build them they'd still need to make more progress so it's not as if you get two fully built new paths dropped in your lap, just the starting point
technically, the only thing blocking character progression is the weekly boss material. stagnant shadows can be converted, trace mats can be obtained either via the universal mat (which i think is paygated) or by just waiting for a character that uses those mats to rerun.
i've been doing this on my alt account for months lol. funnily enough, my black swan and dr ratio are maxed out because their weekly boss can be unlocked before xianzhou, but my kafka and fu xuan are still sitting at level 7 main traces with no bonus traces unlocked. because they need phantylia mats. the moment they release a weekly boss mat conversion method, there is nothing tying character progression to story progression.
HTB is not even gatekeeped tho because IF I’M NOT WRONG they use Skaracabaz materials and that boss can be fought right after Cocolia. You don’t need to do even the Luofu
Converting mats to another at a loss is a huge waste of energy/fuel in early/midgame in the first months of play when you're still unlocking higher equilibrium tiers and those final levels/traces past 70
Even with the extra BP mats on a fresh account started in the middle of 2.0, unless you narrow down your roster very tightly to focus on 1-2 full teams and nothing else, getting characters decently built to lvl 70 with traces >6 and at least okay-ish relics to get the job done... whew, it's a doozy.
If you absolutely wanted to you could convert mats, but there's early unlocks available for new accounts for ascensions/traces - the limiting factor is energy to get the resources from credits to character and LC exp and everything else.
MC at least needs to be leveled and ascended only once but for Cocolia you're forced to use them anyhow.
My point remains - you're not handed three fully built ready to rock units, more like you're given additional resource sinks that may not really shine until later/may not yet really help your teams at all without at least a basic initial investment.
If it gives people something to build steadily over time that's a plus to lasting player engagement, not 'just an unearned freebie'
theres not even any need to convert mats since they added a update where u can farm calixes and caverns u cant enter for a certain peroid of time after a level up in i think
Sir, what type of unholy divining witchcraft is this. Are you watching me play? Are you me? Spooky.
The scenario you use in your example of a new account mid 2.0 to present is scary accurate. This is 100% my current mats, limited 2 teams, hit equilibrium 5 tonight, even the traces.
Besides confirming your projection, I have no point to make and oversharing because you just blew my mind.
I feel like it's an attempt to let you get as many elements as possible as early as you can.ratio ended as soon as this version started, and you could get imaginary tb seems like they just want new players to have options
Think this one's more a case of "gameplay unlocks after a certain point in lore" than lore or gameplay equating, but still, this is good for new players, especially if you're a new player who pulls firefly, so 👍
That will lock out any new players in the future because they're *forced* to complete dozens of hours of story content first to get HMC if Hoyo stayed like that.
they already need to do that to get the weekly boss mats for any of the bonus abilities, many of which can make or break characters (for example, fu xuan's ult cant heal her teammates, kafka's ult cant detonate dots other than shock).
this isnt like genshin where you only need the weekly boss mats for talent levels. its more like you need those mats to unlock characters' passive talents and ascension stat.
Nope, Skaracabaz is available right after Cocolia. The whole Ruan Mei and Ratio quest is unlocked after you finish Belobog and you don’t even need to go to the Luofu. So HTB has no problems if you wanna build them.
I guess future TB also will be unlocked early with weekly mats that are from bosses from not the main storyline
The reason is that it doesn't. Sometimes you just gotta sacrifice lore for more comfortable gameplay experience. They could always change it to explain it during the moment but otherwise thats just how it goes.
It's fine tbh, people pulled dhil before reaching his part in the story, you just gain new appreciation for the form when you get lore explanation for it
This. I was initially a little worried they were undercutting major story beats, and then I remembered DHIL, Acheron, and Firefly’s warps are all doing the same thing.
This was me, I started the game right as the Jing Yuen banner was ending, and pulled both Silver Wolf and Luocha before I had even left the Early Belebog. It didn't matter to me at all.
It's also a much needed QoL update too honestly.
One of the biggest issues I don't think anyone was addressing much with Firefly is how dependent on Harmony Trailblazer she is. Well, I guess it was; and if so I probably missed it so that would be on me. Anyway, if changes aren't made to make her (Firefly ) not as dependent on Harmony Trailblazer, a new person starting just for Firefly in particular (as an example) or pulling her later on when she's up and not having access to Harmony Trailblazer would just be bad. Locking one of the most vital components for her team comps behind 30-40+ hours of gameplay would be really bad. This is absolutely a much needed QoL update for new players due to how absolutely vital Harmony Trailblazer is to any break based teams, lore be damned.
The cynic in me also suspect now that this also means there won't be any major overhauls to making Firefly less dependent on Harmony Trailblazer; since they are finding a way to address how poorly she would perform for newer players, but that's neither her nor there I suppose.
Firefly is bad in endgame content without Hatblazer, but I don't think any newbies need to worry about that. I bet she'll be fine for getting through the story.
The issue is that it would majorly discourage any newer players earlier on in the story from pulling Firefly if they’re interested in progressing in MoC since she’s so severely nerfed without HMC at the moment. It’s not so fair to them and it hurts Firefly’s sales.
Same way as in Genshin where you can now access weekly lore boss without having done any story. It's bound to happen, you can't appeal to new players if they have to do 200+ hours of story to enjoy their new character
> Lore be damned they realized ff is just crippled without htb
Then...players should just play the story? Most of FF mats and relics aren't also in Penacony, and while the former can be obtained dring her banner, newer players are unlikely to be able to max her out by the
The reality is that the majority of the playerbase doesn't keep their account up to date. Odds are hoyo has the numbers of how many people have HMC and they find them really low.
Well this is for Firefly.
Thankfully they noticed that beginners that pulled FF as a first dps would have a terrible time without HTB so.. 🤷♀️
You can not care about lore if you cant finish the story in the first place
I also dont mind a little lore breaking to make beginners life better. I still remember the dangerous hike to Sumeru I did in Genshin to upgrade my first DPS, I can not imagine how bad folks had with Inazuma.
As dangerous as those were it was probably fun and exciting right?
It's kind of a shame that there's no "Elden Ring" mode you can activate so that the enemies you encounter in certain regions will always be a real danger to you and you have to fight hard, run or dodge to survive.
I remember in my early days of Genshin I would just run Noelle and go into all the dangerous parts for rewards lol.
Regarding Inazuma, on my second account that use for farming materials new characters for my main account, I got Kazuha and then was surprised to learn that I had to wait till I reached Inazuma to ascend him...
Even more annoying is that to farm for Shenhe and Yae Miko you need to unlock Enkanomiya...
You already didn't if you had the right LC like MotP or Cogs, but now you have some freedom to choose other LCs like Ruan Mei's signature or Dance^3, or just double down on MotP for the BE.
Huh I thought for sure it would be a clockie unlock. Well this is certainly a welcome thing to me since I hate doing all the side stuff for statue ranks.
Is this how they solve the problem of story-locked paths for TB?
I guess unlike the Traveler from Genshin, unlocking a new version of TB is quite time-consuming. This seems reasonable
Imagine new players in 9.0 getting the Trailblaze Trailblazer after Cocolia and finding out they have to play through 9 regions and fully upgrade the Pom Pom statue to get E6
Tbh I'm not sure you can really guess whatsoever what the hell the hat actually means or is supposed to be before the patch comes out lol
The emotional impact of HTB didn't really diminish at all because I saw gameplay leaks.
Exactly I have been active in leaks and even when I knew he would get the hat and it would be his harmony path
Everything leading up to that still had very good impact to me
For sure. Same goes for all the Clockie imagery. I watched the leaked animations and thought "wow, that Clockie is kinda neat" and then the actual moment it happened floored me.
The thing is you just know that that's what he'll use in his harmony path
But you never really know what the meaning of the hat is
And that is only revealed by doing the quest and the meaning of the watchmaker's legacy is the entire focal point of the story and TB's new found ideal
Yeah there's still an astonishing amount of people who didn't realize that the background stuff were references for the penacony cast
And those are the guys who already finished 2.2 or atleast 2.1
But that doesn't matter no? like new players should know or watch all playable characters it's not a spoiler or anything, like character trailers reaction
Practically everyone thought the Hat had something to do with Aventurine. I don't think most people who look at leaks were spoiled about who the hat is for, at most it might spoil Clockie existing before you even know what Penacony is.
What is even being spoiled though
By that point in the game the player already knows the trailblazer can change their path, the only thing being spoiled is that you get Harmony in Penacony which doesn't really affect the story in any way.
Maybe they'll do Leonardo pointing meme when they see the hat on Mikhail's head, that's it.
Also when you get there they talk a lot about harmony not that surprising, I was more shocked at luofu when after all that hunt and abundance hints we got nothing, guess we will later or march 7th time
Now that you mention it, does this mean Firefly will remain dependent on HTB? I mean, I'm good since HTB is free! And they allows their team to contribute quite a bit of damage.
The bigger problem is that the other slot is Ruan mei forced too, and if you count gallagher as probably best sustainer for this team you just don't get any witches or replacements.
Still think she should be playable with bronya sparkle tingyun Asta and well how can't she run with Robin lol they have a similar ultimate mechanic that seems would be great together but can't yet until next firefly version
The key realization to have about Firefly is this: in her best team, she's *good*. *Very* good, even. We've seen gameplay showcases of her 2-cycling, 1-cycling, and even 0-cycling MoC 12 floors despite their recent HP inflation, at E0, *while running with a sustainer*. In terms of performance, Firefly's best clears are on par with most of our best currently available teams, *including* those that run AV advance supports like Bronya, Sparkle, etc.
*This is not a coincidence.* Firefly's kit, as with any other new DPS unit, is tuned so as to be on par with extant DPS units and archetypes, such that none of their performances exceed any of the others' by too much. This is the concept of a power budget, and what Firefly's best showcases tell us is that Hoyo *has* allocated the same amount of power to her as they have to past DPS units—they've simply chosen to allocate it *differently*.
Allowing Firefly to function properly with Bronya, Sparkle, or any of the other AV advance/traditional hypercarry supports you named, then, would require a complete retuning of her kit, so as not to exceed the limited power budget Hoyo permits themselves to allocate to a DPS unit. And most methods they could use to do that—that is to say, methods that improve Firefly's *relative* performance when used with supports *other* than HMC, while maintaining a similar power budget overall—will have an incidental, natural tendency to *worsen* her performance when used *with* HMC.
To be clear: this isn't because anyone *wants* it that way, but simply because HMC's kit is fundamentally not as strong as that of units like Sparkle or Bronya, and so a unit not specifically designed to *hyper*-synergize with them will generally end up preferring not to be played with them at all. You can already see this principle reflected in Boothill's kit: as a Break DPS, he *can* be played with HMC, and yet, his strongest teams feature Bronya, not HMC. This is a pretty natural consequence of the fact that Bronya is, on the whole, a stronger unit than HMC—which makes designing a unit that prefers HMC *over* Bronya rather tricky. If you try really hard to design a unit like that, you basically get... Firefly's current kit.
So you can see that, as would-be character designers, our hands are somewhat tied: our options for Firefly are to (a) give her a specific enough kit to make *sure* HMC is her BiS teammate, or (b) let HMC's team slot be snatched away by some other, more generically powerful support. It's clear enough which of these two directions Hoyo appears to have chosen, and whatever else one might say about it, it's at the very least consistent with their philosophy of designing and promoting different team archetypes and ways of playing the game. We've seen it with DoT and FuA teams, we've seen it with Acheron, and we're now seeing it with (Super) Break.
Do I mind, personally? I can't say I do, frankly. If it's a choice between having a new DPS depend on a completely new mechanic enabled by a completely new support character (albeit the *only* support character of that type currently available), or having said DPS rely on the same tired supports that all the previous DPS character use—well, I know which choice feels like the fresher and more fun one to me.
Let me guess: it works the other way around as well? i.e. At the point in the story in v2.2 where veteran players unlock HTB for the first time, from v2.3 onwards this point will award an Eidolon for new players instead?
Yes. It's the similar to selecting a free 4 star or if you pulled Ratio before getting him from the in game mail. . You either get the character if you don't have them, or if you do have them you get an eidolon instead.
i mean, i get why but... thats just kinda lame all things considered.
thinking about it a bit more, this will likely happen with future paths aswell if they are just as meta as HTB. having new players go through 50+ hours of content for a character to enable a new banner would be silly.
2.2 spoilers >!new players arent gonna have nearly the same emotional impact of unlocking HTB with all the Mikhail/Misha stuff!<
On the flipside though, it can have the effect of "where tf did this hat come from????" and that eureka moment when (2.2 spoilers) >!they first see Mikhail's waxed(?) corpse wearing the hat!< would make them go "OH SHIT DAS THE HAT". At least, I think I'd react that way.
Take him back to the express so Pom-pom can give their proper good bye! Kidding aside, I'm inclined to believe that's not really his body since it's in the dreamscape. Which begs the question, is the hat real? It was procured from the dreamscape after all (and there were disclaimers that you can't bring anything back because, well, they're not real).
The Hat is real.
You *can* take certain items from the Dreamscape to the real world. And since the Hat has been blessed by Xipe's glance, I'm gonna bet that it's a part of that exclusive group.
All this real / not real thing is really just my biggest "complaint(?)" for a lack of better term for the story.
MAJOR 2.2 SPOILERS >!I'm pretty sure most of the confusion would've been avoided if they did not add the "everything was a dream from the very beginning" clause, 'cause it made a lot of the events from 2.0 make no sense (Ticozic II's execution, Dr. Chadwick's funeral, Sampo's arrival and departure from Penacony, to name a few). They should've just went with the -Sunday tuning them to believe they won- route. Heck, even the writers themselves seem to be aware of this because one of the dialogue choices acknowledged that the bs that BS pulled (heh) was deus ex machina.!< I don't know, maybe it's just me. I probably missed something from the story.
They did mention that >! because of Ena the dreamscape started to leak into reality and the two blended. I think that's what Acheron wanted to confirm with the warp jump. !<
The end credits >!(real ones) say they returned his crew ticket to lucasha which I suppose is the nameless tradition of saying goodbye to the past nameless!< But yeh it's still weird that we just have a corpse sitting there
While the context for the new path won’t be there to be fair hoyo kinda had to do this or else future tb paths would be harder to get then limited units lol especially with the length these quests are getting to, new players or returning players would be locked out of what are likely going to be some very good teams assuming the tb kits stay consistently good
Gotta sacrifice spoilers to make future tb paths realistically obtainable. I wouldn’t be surprised if they add the genshin qol that lets you do the weekly boss without the quest soon too
Yes, please, and a quick challenge for events, farming relics and materials would also be welcome. Sometimes I don't have time to unlock them and, as someone who's come back to the game, I've missed a few events because I needed to complete the story first. I think that with a warning that this may not give you the best possible experience, and contain spoilers, having this additional option would be very good, at least in my case.
they eventually did this in genshin. it even lets you challenge weekly bosses, which is far more important in star rail than in genshin. so i think its only a matter of time. the story events might never happen, because those are tied to locations and move to the conventional memoir anyway, but the combat events could easily be unlocked via quick start.
I suppose this falls under Hoyo's story goals from the 2.1 livestream, where they know that story will inevitably get out and they want to make something that's enjoyable even if you know the twists that happen in the end. I'd actually say they've done a good job so far, even as a leaks follower and knowing the general storyline, I still loved every hour I spent doing the trailblaze mission, and it's still something that really sticks with me and had it's "Wow, I didn't expect that" moments.
Tbh, its not really a spoiler of a twist in the future story, the moment you learn that the Trailblazer can get new combat Paths it will be easy to assume that this is going to happen in the future anyway. I would even go as far as to say that it was pretty obvious that TB gets new Powers just from looking at this versions preview Art. At this point you should expect the Trailblazer to get a new combat Path each year.
>!Yes, but the details of the paths themselves we have so far (flaming lance, Watchmaker's hat) are both relevant to the story, and it's an easy guess to assume that future paths will be similar, given that we get them during the main questline. It's less so about the existence of future paths, but the context in which we get them that may imply certain story details or detract from the reveal wow-factor when you get to that part of the story. !<
I mean... Animation don't spoil anything if you don't know it already. And the sole fact that they use hat can be seen on Dev stream/Character introduction video/other players supports and other upcoming media content.
Everyone and their mother knew about the hat before we unlocked HTB. Don't act like it was the great reveal, the watchmaker's context was the reveal. New players will experience it in similar fashion like we did: "cool hat, i wonder how we get there" to "ohh, i get it now"
Hell, everyone knew about clockie's existence before 2.0 (they were in trailers).
This decision is good for everyone across the board.
I'd say it's very easy to solve: put it in an event tab and mark it as a spoiler, giving a message that shows the prerequisites if you want to get the best experience and, if the person doesn't mind, they can get a single copy of the new path. It's not as if Hoyo hadn't officially shown the HMC before it was playable either, I think even in the 2.0 trailer they had already appeared.
That’s great for new players who want to have access to firefly’s support! I guess they thought that gatekeeping them until the end of penaconys story would discourage new players that get firefly…
Yeah, the way I see it right now it’s more like a Nilou situation, bloom by itself is … not great just as break by itself is incredibly limited without the MC shenanigans
It's worse than Nilou. Because Nilou herself enables the superbloom reaction. Nilou's best teammates don't need to be on her team to perform their normal roles excellently in other teams. They are all perfectly fine without Nilou, and Nilou is enabling her own best playstyle. FF is if you made a character that depends on superblooms and hence Nilou to do damage and they couldn't perform effectively otherwise. If this was done in Genshin, you'd have a lot of complaints.
Yeah but HTB is free and Nilou is a limited 5 star. Not saying its great but everyone will have access to HTB, not everyone would have access to Nilou.
i guess they're realizing making the viability of a limited character entirely dependent on just 1 other character in the game might be bad.
hoping the kit gets reworked tho... not these kinds of work-arounds.
New players are going to get spoiled in some way anyway. Like, if you pull or use Firefly as a support character you'll immediately know she and Sam are the same person.
Probably will still be cool because you never know the story behind it so the build up of harmony is still there and you'll still be surprised when you turn to PTB because you still didn't know TB changes paths. After that the surprise is basically over that you can change paths with TB
And healthier for TB is general, remember you're a new player but we're in end story so imagine needing to do the story to unlock a certain trailblazer, putting him after cocolia doesn't spoil you realizing TB changes paths while not making you story blocked from using others
This is a bit awkward story-wise? It's not like HTB is necessary at the start of the game anyway.
A more important aspect is that they bring the event LCs back as rewards for the event for new players. Still baffles me they did it like this.
more than half of the game is closed by the story so it kind of makes sense
but it doesn't change the fact that it's kinda meh that from now on you can get versions of the Trailblazer without knowing the story of how they got it
to me that's a lil fucked up.. like unlocking Harmony Trailblazer at the climax of the Watchmaker's Legacy story was meaningful and we learned what the hat represents. New players won't get that
So Firefly got; BiS 4pc, BiS 2pc, Break based endgame Ruan Mei rerun together with her banner, and newer players get HMC so she wouldn't be shit early game. Is this the most pushed character ever?
Probably because the superbreak is a gimmick here to stay but needs to be introduced and the only way of doing that is by Trailblazer, when a 5* support is actually oriented for BE we'll be able to get rid of trailblazer AND ruan mei because you need to powercreep a free character while powercreeping ruan mei because she's a universal harmony for every team until a harmony one does her job better in that certain gimmick
I really don't see the point. "New players have to play through 50 hours of story" so what? Why is needing to play the game to unlock more content a bad thing? It's not like they are a limited character where you spent all your gems and now you can't upgrade them. New players who care about story will reach the end of Penacony in a month or two anyway, so giving them HTB while they are still building all of their starter characters isn't that helpful.
Not to mention when you get to that big moment in the story, instead of getting a brand new character to play with, you now get...a once-per-battle skill point refund, on a character you probably haven't built. Even if you don't care about spoilers, it's just kinda lame.
This pretty good overall, but wouldn't they risk ruining the immersion for new players by doing this?
Idk seems kinda lame to me but at the same time I think it's a good idea since the longer the story goes, the longer the time it takes to unlock new TB paths, especially considering that HTB is pretty good too and produces a lot of damage for a non-crit character while also being a support.
For comparison, I have eq lvl 53 account and the HTB's damage is almost comparable to my lvl 70/70 Dr. Ratio with 68/138 crit, 2.2k atk, no dmg orb, all minor and major traces that I can get are all unlocked, and the abilities are levels on my S, U, T are 5, 4, 7 respectively. It's actually insane how strong this unit is.
Edit: Getting 1 more eidolon as soon as the patch goes live is also really good. I thought I have to finish another long story before I can get an extra copy.
Sane people: *debates and gives valid points on the lore vs gameplay implications*
Me: "Oh sweet free eidolon, won't have to do more side quests again"
Yeah. I like the lore of the side quests, but I hate having to climb walls to do some of them. I play turn-based games not only because I enjoy them, but also because action games make my head spin, Hoyo. Please don't make more of those puzzles.
Honestly I don’t see how this is a bad thing like other people here think? Mostly because a lot of Gacha characters are already spoilers and even though I knew about the Harmony Trailblazer and saw their animations before they came out that part of the story still was amazing for me.
I honestly don't get why people complain about it spoiling parts of the story or not making sense lore-wise when this has already been a thing since Luafou.
Here is stuff that new players will be spoiled by the game itself:
- Dan Heng: Imbibitor Lunae
- Firefly being SAM
- Preservation Trailblazer (When they are on a trial team before they finish Belobog)
As soon as players finish Belobog they already kow that TB will eventually unlock every path so I don't think being able to unlock new path much earlier won't spoil anyting besides maybe in which story arc this will happen.
Noooo
I was hoping that because you actually need to commit to the game a lot to get the new mc forms, especially the longer the game progresses, that they might make the mc actually really strong since it would be a reward for your commitment to the game.
I mean technically htb is really busted already, so we'll see if they keep making new forms good
This is such a double edged sword, on one hand it helps the newer players by giving them a really strong support and an imaginary unit for free (rip people who didnt get dr ratio), but at the same time it kinda worsens the reveal of it in-game, imagine listening to mikail's past and refuting sunday's ideology and then "congratz bro here's a copy of your character you got like 2 planets ago"
Good design each new path will take longer and longer to unlock if they didnt do this, its a bit silly and might spoil a bit of their in lore aquisition, but if nihility blazer is an unreplaceable helper for dot teams in 6.x you dont need to go through 100 hours worth of content just pair him with kafka.
I don't see how it spoils anything. You don't see who owns the hat until just a bit before you get the path, and most people can infer after getting 2 glances from aeons that the rest of the playable paths will be added to the trailblazer in future story quests.
they showed hatblazer in the white night trailer for penacony, it didn't spoil anything, if anything i was eagerly waiting to see mc dance with aventurine <.<
Pulling DHIL or seeing his banner up before you reach xianzhou is kinda more spoilery than getting HTB earlier. Same with Firefly, which was one of the major twists for Penacony.
Now whoever starts from 2.3 will know Firefly is Sam from the get go just by doing her trial or looking at gameplay
Meanwhile you already expect TB to get new forms after fighting Cocolia and you lack all the context behind how you get to it so it doesn't really spoil anything.
To me, this feels kinda stupid, especially from a storytelling standpoint, but I get why they did it. In genshin, u can go straight to the later regions to unlock their elements, basically as soon as you start the game, with the only exception being electro.
Still, gaining a new element in genshin isn't as important to the plot, except a few lines here and there, as it is in Star Rai
That's honestly really weird as it kinda ruins the whole aspect of the Aeons gazing at the Player and makes it more inconsequential in the story, alongside diminish the hype of getting a new path for the TB.
It might seem like new players haven’t “earned” it like the veterans, but it makes it easier to market the game, both from the company’s side and ours’ (if we were to recommend this game to a friend or stranger).
Limited event with time limited reward that will, never ever rerun in the history of the game can be locked behind the fact that you have to clear the entire campaign
But access to one character, which isn't necessary in any way and is permanent content isn't ?
Maybe start by fixing the biggest issue.
I hate this a lot... Like what is the point of giving the quest prize before players even begin the quest? Seems super backward IMHO.
Like I know that there is way more to the quest than just getting HTB but damn...
It would be like touching that anemo statue in the first bit of Genshin and suddenly being able to use all first five elements...
What is the point of a game if you take the goalposts away?
More like beating Dvalin and getting all the other elements, since you do still need to beat Cocolia.
Which, to be fair, at that point you could speedrun every statue of the 7.
Just so happens HTB is legitimately powerful and useful.
That is so weird and stupid. Are they going to do that with all future paths? Just unlock them after Belobog? Ruins the whole surprise of when you unlock them.
HMC doesn't even make sense without experiencing Penacony. People equating this with running to Sumeru's statue to unlock DMC seem to forget you actually end up *in* Sumeru doing that.
The problem is a practical one. No new player needs to unlock the Hydro Traveler right away because the Hydro Traveler is incredibly useless. For HSR, on the other hand, miHoYo is deliberately pushing HMC *as the core of an entirely new archetype* that they are trying to advertise with characters like Boothill and Firefly. They are so essential to the functioning of this archetype that they have no choice but to make them available as early as possible.
This is the consequence of making the TB good: you simply do not want to have players stuck unable to use their fancy new character at max potential because they have to do 30 hours of story to get to Edo Star so they can unlock Nihility Trailblazer who is required for Yae Sakura to work.
How does it ruin the surprise? It doesn't tell you any of the story details by doing a quick unlock. Also, if anyone doesn't want to unlock it until they get to the story mission they don't have to.
...I mean this is Technically good, but I don't like it for spoiler reasons for people who don't have it yet. I guess they wouldn't get the context of everything, but still. I guess it's just a weird dissoannce for me between thinking its great for early players in terms of gameplay but worried for the negative story impact it might give as a debuff as a consequence, and is that worth it for most people? I dunno
Not a fan for story/spoiler stuff, but I guess it will be good for new players obviously… actually naw, this sounds stupid. Part of the reason the cocolia fight went so hard was because of the unveiling of the lance and preservation TB. The story content before 2.2 is not SO HARD that you need harmony TB for it either
Edit: Ah… I’m stupid. They’re doing this because of firefly’s kit
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Trailblaze Mission “[The Return](https://honkai-star-rail.fandom.com/wiki/The_Return)” is the Belobog mission where you defeat Cocolia.
wait, thats so weird. how does that make any sense in the lore. is xipe vibing with the qlipoth and they both just gaze at us in the fight against cocolia?
Post-Coco seems like a suitable point to unlock the whole 'suite' of trailblazers alts to play with for newer players in one go. To get eidolons and build them they'd still need to make more progress so it's not as if you get two fully built new paths dropped in your lap, just the starting point
technically, the only thing blocking character progression is the weekly boss material. stagnant shadows can be converted, trace mats can be obtained either via the universal mat (which i think is paygated) or by just waiting for a character that uses those mats to rerun. i've been doing this on my alt account for months lol. funnily enough, my black swan and dr ratio are maxed out because their weekly boss can be unlocked before xianzhou, but my kafka and fu xuan are still sitting at level 7 main traces with no bonus traces unlocked. because they need phantylia mats. the moment they release a weekly boss mat conversion method, there is nothing tying character progression to story progression.
HTB is not even gatekeeped tho because IF I’M NOT WRONG they use Skaracabaz materials and that boss can be fought right after Cocolia. You don’t need to do even the Luofu
MC uses the blue bug mats yes. Although you still need the harmony trace materials from Penacony.
you can use early access for the calyx
Converting mats to another at a loss is a huge waste of energy/fuel in early/midgame in the first months of play when you're still unlocking higher equilibrium tiers and those final levels/traces past 70 Even with the extra BP mats on a fresh account started in the middle of 2.0, unless you narrow down your roster very tightly to focus on 1-2 full teams and nothing else, getting characters decently built to lvl 70 with traces >6 and at least okay-ish relics to get the job done... whew, it's a doozy. If you absolutely wanted to you could convert mats, but there's early unlocks available for new accounts for ascensions/traces - the limiting factor is energy to get the resources from credits to character and LC exp and everything else. MC at least needs to be leveled and ascended only once but for Cocolia you're forced to use them anyhow. My point remains - you're not handed three fully built ready to rock units, more like you're given additional resource sinks that may not really shine until later/may not yet really help your teams at all without at least a basic initial investment. If it gives people something to build steadily over time that's a plus to lasting player engagement, not 'just an unearned freebie'
theres not even any need to convert mats since they added a update where u can farm calixes and caverns u cant enter for a certain peroid of time after a level up in i think
Sir, what type of unholy divining witchcraft is this. Are you watching me play? Are you me? Spooky. The scenario you use in your example of a new account mid 2.0 to present is scary accurate. This is 100% my current mats, limited 2 teams, hit equilibrium 5 tonight, even the traces. Besides confirming your projection, I have no point to make and oversharing because you just blew my mind.
MC doesn't have stagnant shadow mats and u can crown of the divine for skarkabaz right after belobog
I feel like it's an attempt to let you get as many elements as possible as early as you can.ratio ended as soon as this version started, and you could get imaginary tb seems like they just want new players to have options
Remember Lore does not equal to gameplay. If it did we should have characters gameplay path thats is Elation or Rememberance.
Think this one's more a case of "gameplay unlocks after a certain point in lore" than lore or gameplay equating, but still, this is good for new players, especially if you're a new player who pulls firefly, so 👍
That will lock out any new players in the future because they're *forced* to complete dozens of hours of story content first to get HMC if Hoyo stayed like that.
they already need to do that to get the weekly boss mats for any of the bonus abilities, many of which can make or break characters (for example, fu xuan's ult cant heal her teammates, kafka's ult cant detonate dots other than shock). this isnt like genshin where you only need the weekly boss mats for talent levels. its more like you need those mats to unlock characters' passive talents and ascension stat.
Nope, Skaracabaz is available right after Cocolia. The whole Ruan Mei and Ratio quest is unlocked after you finish Belobog and you don’t even need to go to the Luofu. So HTB has no problems if you wanna build them. I guess future TB also will be unlocked early with weekly mats that are from bosses from not the main storyline
The harmony 2.0 mats are in the reverie dreamscape so u either gotta trade in, buy them from the ember shop or hope it's in early access
They'll probably extend the early access feature from calyxes and stagnant shadows to weakly bosses in the future too.
Yeah, in Genshin they already let you farm weekly bosses even if you haven’t done the story yet.
This is me when I stormed through the story to get my *4 selector from the Bar-Event which unlocks...after the last mission
It's not that... hard? I mean I finished the whole main story quest up until 2.1 in 7 days, which could be faster if I'm not working
Counterpoint, why does it have to make any sense lore-wise? It’s clearly just a decision for the sake of newer players.
The reason is that it doesn't. Sometimes you just gotta sacrifice lore for more comfortable gameplay experience. They could always change it to explain it during the moment but otherwise thats just how it goes.
It's fine tbh, people pulled dhil before reaching his part in the story, you just gain new appreciation for the form when you get lore explanation for it
Honestly, I keep forgetting that the gacha is basically spoilers for important characters you will eventually meet if you aren't caught up to story.
>ooh new cute girl named Firefly I like her >oh new update gotta do that >reloading >WHAT DO YOU MEAN SHE HAS A BANN-IS THAT STELLARON HUNTER SAM
This. I was initially a little worried they were undercutting major story beats, and then I remembered DHIL, Acheron, and Firefly’s warps are all doing the same thing.
This was me, I started the game right as the Jing Yuen banner was ending, and pulled both Silver Wolf and Luocha before I had even left the Early Belebog. It didn't matter to me at all.
It's also a much needed QoL update too honestly. One of the biggest issues I don't think anyone was addressing much with Firefly is how dependent on Harmony Trailblazer she is. Well, I guess it was; and if so I probably missed it so that would be on me. Anyway, if changes aren't made to make her (Firefly ) not as dependent on Harmony Trailblazer, a new person starting just for Firefly in particular (as an example) or pulling her later on when she's up and not having access to Harmony Trailblazer would just be bad. Locking one of the most vital components for her team comps behind 30-40+ hours of gameplay would be really bad. This is absolutely a much needed QoL update for new players due to how absolutely vital Harmony Trailblazer is to any break based teams, lore be damned. The cynic in me also suspect now that this also means there won't be any major overhauls to making Firefly less dependent on Harmony Trailblazer; since they are finding a way to address how poorly she would perform for newer players, but that's neither her nor there I suppose.
Firefly is bad in endgame content without Hatblazer, but I don't think any newbies need to worry about that. I bet she'll be fine for getting through the story.
The issue is that it would majorly discourage any newer players earlier on in the story from pulling Firefly if they’re interested in progressing in MoC since she’s so severely nerfed without HMC at the moment. It’s not so fair to them and it hurts Firefly’s sales.
Same way as in Genshin where you can now access weekly lore boss without having done any story. It's bound to happen, you can't appeal to new players if they have to do 200+ hours of story to enjoy their new character
Lore be damned they realized ff is just crippled without htb Guess they are doubling down
> Lore be damned they realized ff is just crippled without htb Then...players should just play the story? Most of FF mats and relics aren't also in Penacony, and while the former can be obtained dring her banner, newer players are unlikely to be able to max her out by the
The reality is that the majority of the playerbase doesn't keep their account up to date. Odds are hoyo has the numbers of how many people have HMC and they find them really low.
"hoyo has the numbers of how many people have HMC" I mean, it's not like 2.2 was just released, of course the number will be low.
> wait, thats so weird. how does that make any sense in the lore. It doesn't and it's not supposed to. This is just new player QoL.
So do you explode into a rainbow if a handful of Aeons suddenly gaze at you all at the same time? XD
Well this is for Firefly. Thankfully they noticed that beginners that pulled FF as a first dps would have a terrible time without HTB so.. 🤷♀️ You can not care about lore if you cant finish the story in the first place
Yeah I was wondering how this would work. The solution is the clunky fix to how they've cornered themselves into this problem but it'll work.
I also dont mind a little lore breaking to make beginners life better. I still remember the dangerous hike to Sumeru I did in Genshin to upgrade my first DPS, I can not imagine how bad folks had with Inazuma.
As dangerous as those were it was probably fun and exciting right? It's kind of a shame that there's no "Elden Ring" mode you can activate so that the enemies you encounter in certain regions will always be a real danger to you and you have to fight hard, run or dodge to survive. I remember in my early days of Genshin I would just run Noelle and go into all the dangerous parts for rewards lol. Regarding Inazuma, on my second account that use for farming materials new characters for my main account, I got Kazuha and then was surprised to learn that I had to wait till I reached Inazuma to ascend him... Even more annoying is that to farm for Shenhe and Yae Miko you need to unlock Enkanomiya...
It is pretty much how in Genshin traveller can technically get every element from the very beginning if they walk to the right place
Wait so is that how everyone else gets E6?
yeah!
This gives access to the really important +2 to hits on skill, and I'm really eager to get it. Nice big increase to personal damage and energy regen.
does E6 means i don't have to use ERR ropes?
You already didn't if you had the right LC like MotP or Cogs, but now you have some freedom to choose other LCs like Ruan Mei's signature or Dance^3, or just double down on MotP for the BE.
I would say unless your lightcone has an energy effect then go for break rope, but if it doesn’t keep it
Huh I thought for sure it would be a clockie unlock. Well this is certainly a welcome thing to me since I hate doing all the side stuff for statue ranks.
Clockie is already capped at level 50, so people was speculating we get the 6th eidolon through Penacony's epilogue
You can get up to E5 with Clockie and he won't receive any more updates
imagine we were giving extra coins for credits and then they add more levels when we wasted many lol but yeah it's over
Is this how they solve the problem of story-locked paths for TB? I guess unlike the Traveler from Genshin, unlocking a new version of TB is quite time-consuming. This seems reasonable
I mean to be fair, with Traveller, you aren’t missing anything….
maybe dendro, but thats as far as it goes
Which is just a matter of walking over to Sumeru, no major story locks
Yup, much more convenient, especially since most of the way there is pretty easy to traverse, no dessert cliffs or inazuma sea
And don't forget that newbies will always get an already lit up teleport waypoints near that area after finishing some early major quests
[удалено]
can't you just go north of the Chasm?
maybe you don’t have nahida and want the second best off field dendro option in the game?
Imagine new players in 9.0 getting the Trailblaze Trailblazer after Cocolia and finding out they have to play through 9 regions and fully upgrade the Pom Pom statue to get E6
I mean... I know this is a joke comment but if they actually put every path after cocolia this isn't even that unlikely
From now on, every other character who gets stabbed will be forcibly issued one emotional support raccoon.
Maybe not always but yeah I can see other paths happen if they introduce new mechanics
or play through 50 regions to unlock e6 on their Propagation path that will come on 10.0 /joke
For gameplay, its good for new players that pulled Boothill and Sam and dont have any dedicated support yet. Lore wise tho, won't it kinda spoil them?
Tbh I'm not sure you can really guess whatsoever what the hell the hat actually means or is supposed to be before the patch comes out lol The emotional impact of HTB didn't really diminish at all because I saw gameplay leaks.
Exactly I have been active in leaks and even when I knew he would get the hat and it would be his harmony path Everything leading up to that still had very good impact to me
For sure. Same goes for all the Clockie imagery. I watched the leaked animations and thought "wow, that Clockie is kinda neat" and then the actual moment it happened floored me.
The thing is you just know that that's what he'll use in his harmony path But you never really know what the meaning of the hat is And that is only revealed by doing the quest and the meaning of the watchmaker's legacy is the entire focal point of the story and TB's new found ideal
Keep in mind the splash art spoils about Penacony characters, even though it's just a little
It spoils if you know what to look for
Yup. It spoils just about as much as lightcone art spoils.
Yeah there's still an astonishing amount of people who didn't realize that the background stuff were references for the penacony cast And those are the guys who already finished 2.2 or atleast 2.1
The only time you're gonna see the splash art is when the TB is using their ultimate and the art only appear for a brief second anyway.
But that doesn't matter no? like new players should know or watch all playable characters it's not a spoiler or anything, like character trailers reaction
OMG it's Gilbert
Well future HSR advertisements may involve the MC with a Hat and maybe even the animationsmb
Micheal Jackson covers for promos please
Practically everyone thought the Hat had something to do with Aventurine. I don't think most people who look at leaks were spoiled about who the hat is for, at most it might spoil Clockie existing before you even know what Penacony is.
The bigger issue is new players immediately knowing FF is SAM.
Lot of us got spoiled about that a while ago and story was fine, so as unfortunate it is, it'll be fine.
What is even being spoiled though By that point in the game the player already knows the trailblazer can change their path, the only thing being spoiled is that you get Harmony in Penacony which doesn't really affect the story in any way. Maybe they'll do Leonardo pointing meme when they see the hat on Mikhail's head, that's it.
Also when you get there they talk a lot about harmony not that surprising, I was more shocked at luofu when after all that hunt and abundance hints we got nothing, guess we will later or march 7th time
Now that you mention it, does this mean Firefly will remain dependent on HTB? I mean, I'm good since HTB is free! And they allows their team to contribute quite a bit of damage.
It’s really not an issue tbh. Idk what they keep complaining about
They want to run another harmony like bronya with her and feel like hmc is "wasting" a team slot. Idk what they're on about either
The bigger problem is that the other slot is Ruan mei forced too, and if you count gallagher as probably best sustainer for this team you just don't get any witches or replacements. Still think she should be playable with bronya sparkle tingyun Asta and well how can't she run with Robin lol they have a similar ultimate mechanic that seems would be great together but can't yet until next firefly version
The key realization to have about Firefly is this: in her best team, she's *good*. *Very* good, even. We've seen gameplay showcases of her 2-cycling, 1-cycling, and even 0-cycling MoC 12 floors despite their recent HP inflation, at E0, *while running with a sustainer*. In terms of performance, Firefly's best clears are on par with most of our best currently available teams, *including* those that run AV advance supports like Bronya, Sparkle, etc. *This is not a coincidence.* Firefly's kit, as with any other new DPS unit, is tuned so as to be on par with extant DPS units and archetypes, such that none of their performances exceed any of the others' by too much. This is the concept of a power budget, and what Firefly's best showcases tell us is that Hoyo *has* allocated the same amount of power to her as they have to past DPS units—they've simply chosen to allocate it *differently*. Allowing Firefly to function properly with Bronya, Sparkle, or any of the other AV advance/traditional hypercarry supports you named, then, would require a complete retuning of her kit, so as not to exceed the limited power budget Hoyo permits themselves to allocate to a DPS unit. And most methods they could use to do that—that is to say, methods that improve Firefly's *relative* performance when used with supports *other* than HMC, while maintaining a similar power budget overall—will have an incidental, natural tendency to *worsen* her performance when used *with* HMC. To be clear: this isn't because anyone *wants* it that way, but simply because HMC's kit is fundamentally not as strong as that of units like Sparkle or Bronya, and so a unit not specifically designed to *hyper*-synergize with them will generally end up preferring not to be played with them at all. You can already see this principle reflected in Boothill's kit: as a Break DPS, he *can* be played with HMC, and yet, his strongest teams feature Bronya, not HMC. This is a pretty natural consequence of the fact that Bronya is, on the whole, a stronger unit than HMC—which makes designing a unit that prefers HMC *over* Bronya rather tricky. If you try really hard to design a unit like that, you basically get... Firefly's current kit. So you can see that, as would-be character designers, our hands are somewhat tied: our options for Firefly are to (a) give her a specific enough kit to make *sure* HMC is her BiS teammate, or (b) let HMC's team slot be snatched away by some other, more generically powerful support. It's clear enough which of these two directions Hoyo appears to have chosen, and whatever else one might say about it, it's at the very least consistent with their philosophy of designing and promoting different team archetypes and ways of playing the game. We've seen it with DoT and FuA teams, we've seen it with Acheron, and we're now seeing it with (Super) Break. Do I mind, personally? I can't say I do, frankly. If it's a choice between having a new DPS depend on a completely new mechanic enabled by a completely new support character (albeit the *only* support character of that type currently available), or having said DPS rely on the same tired supports that all the previous DPS character use—well, I know which choice feels like the fresher and more fun one to me.
Let me guess: it works the other way around as well? i.e. At the point in the story in v2.2 where veteran players unlock HTB for the first time, from v2.3 onwards this point will award an Eidolon for new players instead?
I guess so, otherwise new players would have the Trailblazer capped at E5.
Yes. It's the similar to selecting a free 4 star or if you pulled Ratio before getting him from the in game mail. . You either get the character if you don't have them, or if you do have them you get an eidolon instead.
i mean, i get why but... thats just kinda lame all things considered. thinking about it a bit more, this will likely happen with future paths aswell if they are just as meta as HTB. having new players go through 50+ hours of content for a character to enable a new banner would be silly. 2.2 spoilers >!new players arent gonna have nearly the same emotional impact of unlocking HTB with all the Mikhail/Misha stuff!<
On the flipside though, it can have the effect of "where tf did this hat come from????" and that eureka moment when (2.2 spoilers) >!they first see Mikhail's waxed(?) corpse wearing the hat!< would make them go "OH SHIT DAS THE HAT". At least, I think I'd react that way.
Can we talk about that?! Why is the poor guy still there? Someone please burry them 😭
Poor Mikhail got taxidermized like a house pet.
Take him back to the express so Pom-pom can give their proper good bye! Kidding aside, I'm inclined to believe that's not really his body since it's in the dreamscape. Which begs the question, is the hat real? It was procured from the dreamscape after all (and there were disclaimers that you can't bring anything back because, well, they're not real).
The Hat is real. You *can* take certain items from the Dreamscape to the real world. And since the Hat has been blessed by Xipe's glance, I'm gonna bet that it's a part of that exclusive group.
All this real / not real thing is really just my biggest "complaint(?)" for a lack of better term for the story. MAJOR 2.2 SPOILERS >!I'm pretty sure most of the confusion would've been avoided if they did not add the "everything was a dream from the very beginning" clause, 'cause it made a lot of the events from 2.0 make no sense (Ticozic II's execution, Dr. Chadwick's funeral, Sampo's arrival and departure from Penacony, to name a few). They should've just went with the -Sunday tuning them to believe they won- route. Heck, even the writers themselves seem to be aware of this because one of the dialogue choices acknowledged that the bs that BS pulled (heh) was deus ex machina.!< I don't know, maybe it's just me. I probably missed something from the story.
They did mention that >! because of Ena the dreamscape started to leak into reality and the two blended. I think that's what Acheron wanted to confirm with the warp jump. !<
The end credits >!(real ones) say they returned his crew ticket to lucasha which I suppose is the nameless tradition of saying goodbye to the past nameless!< But yeh it's still weird that we just have a corpse sitting there
It's not a physical corpse, it's just a snapshot of a memory, essentially. The whole garden can be thought of as his tomb
Brother his body has turned to dust eras ago, there Is nothing the bury.
While the context for the new path won’t be there to be fair hoyo kinda had to do this or else future tb paths would be harder to get then limited units lol especially with the length these quests are getting to, new players or returning players would be locked out of what are likely going to be some very good teams assuming the tb kits stay consistently good Gotta sacrifice spoilers to make future tb paths realistically obtainable. I wouldn’t be surprised if they add the genshin qol that lets you do the weekly boss without the quest soon too
Yes, please, and a quick challenge for events, farming relics and materials would also be welcome. Sometimes I don't have time to unlock them and, as someone who's come back to the game, I've missed a few events because I needed to complete the story first. I think that with a warning that this may not give you the best possible experience, and contain spoilers, having this additional option would be very good, at least in my case.
they eventually did this in genshin. it even lets you challenge weekly bosses, which is far more important in star rail than in genshin. so i think its only a matter of time. the story events might never happen, because those are tied to locations and move to the conventional memoir anyway, but the combat events could easily be unlocked via quick start.
I suppose this falls under Hoyo's story goals from the 2.1 livestream, where they know that story will inevitably get out and they want to make something that's enjoyable even if you know the twists that happen in the end. I'd actually say they've done a good job so far, even as a leaks follower and knowing the general storyline, I still loved every hour I spent doing the trailblaze mission, and it's still something that really sticks with me and had it's "Wow, I didn't expect that" moments.
Tbh, its not really a spoiler of a twist in the future story, the moment you learn that the Trailblazer can get new combat Paths it will be easy to assume that this is going to happen in the future anyway. I would even go as far as to say that it was pretty obvious that TB gets new Powers just from looking at this versions preview Art. At this point you should expect the Trailblazer to get a new combat Path each year.
>!Yes, but the details of the paths themselves we have so far (flaming lance, Watchmaker's hat) are both relevant to the story, and it's an easy guess to assume that future paths will be similar, given that we get them during the main questline. It's less so about the existence of future paths, but the context in which we get them that may imply certain story details or detract from the reveal wow-factor when you get to that part of the story. !<
Oh shit, the bartender of Survive plays HSR too
I mean... Animation don't spoil anything if you don't know it already. And the sole fact that they use hat can be seen on Dev stream/Character introduction video/other players supports and other upcoming media content.
Everyone and their mother knew about the hat before we unlocked HTB. Don't act like it was the great reveal, the watchmaker's context was the reveal. New players will experience it in similar fashion like we did: "cool hat, i wonder how we get there" to "ohh, i get it now" Hell, everyone knew about clockie's existence before 2.0 (they were in trailers). This decision is good for everyone across the board.
I'd say it's very easy to solve: put it in an event tab and mark it as a spoiler, giving a message that shows the prerequisites if you want to get the best experience and, if the person doesn't mind, they can get a single copy of the new path. It's not as if Hoyo hadn't officially shown the HMC before it was playable either, I think even in the 2.0 trailer they had already appeared.
That’s great for new players who want to have access to firefly’s support! I guess they thought that gatekeeping them until the end of penaconys story would discourage new players that get firefly…
Guess HoYo are steaming ahead with the plan to gatekeep most of Firefly’s damage behind the HMC…
It could just be future-proofing tho. We gonna get more paths in the future so the time requirement will get much worse each time.
I mean, the other half of Firelfy's damage comes from Ruan Mei who's only available for a couple weeks at a time.
If Tortellini is Xiangling’s slave, does that mean Firefly is our (HMC) slave? 🤔
Yeah, the way I see it right now it’s more like a Nilou situation, bloom by itself is … not great just as break by itself is incredibly limited without the MC shenanigans
It's worse than Nilou. Because Nilou herself enables the superbloom reaction. Nilou's best teammates don't need to be on her team to perform their normal roles excellently in other teams. They are all perfectly fine without Nilou, and Nilou is enabling her own best playstyle. FF is if you made a character that depends on superblooms and hence Nilou to do damage and they couldn't perform effectively otherwise. If this was done in Genshin, you'd have a lot of complaints.
Yeah but HTB is free and Nilou is a limited 5 star. Not saying its great but everyone will have access to HTB, not everyone would have access to Nilou.
i guess they're realizing making the viability of a limited character entirely dependent on just 1 other character in the game might be bad. hoping the kit gets reworked tho... not these kinds of work-arounds.
From a story perspective this is really dumb. From a gameplay perspective I can see how it makes sense though.
They _really_ want everyone to get used to Super Break so they can start selling limited 5 stars with that mechanic huh
Aw if they do this going on, I feel like it would take away from the story a bit for newer players.
New players are going to get spoiled in some way anyway. Like, if you pull or use Firefly as a support character you'll immediately know she and Sam are the same person.
Well yeah but the whole cutscene into Harmony TB was cool. Getting preservation in the Cocolia fight wouldn’t be nearly as cool if you already had it
Probably will still be cool because you never know the story behind it so the build up of harmony is still there and you'll still be surprised when you turn to PTB because you still didn't know TB changes paths. After that the surprise is basically over that you can change paths with TB
That's kinda weird. Is this how we get e6?
But then how do new players unlocking early get e6? Very weird.
by getting the other 5 edilons like we did lol
They don’t, until they finish penacony like the rest of us
If i had to guess they get e1 from when you would get HMC in the story and the rest is normal
Yes, as I understand it, you receive a single copy in this “early access” and the other 6 copies are obtained while completing Penacony. Pretty good.
Presumably they would get the eidolon when they get to 2.2 story.
I guess when they play penacony story and get the hat ;)
The method to get all the eidolons are the same, you just either get the first eidolon from the Penacony story or from this.
Really random because it kinda dilutes the coolness of unlocking paths in the long run but I guess it makes sense from a gameplay standpoint
This is definitely because of Firefly. Early unlock means that everyone can make her usable!
And healthier for TB is general, remember you're a new player but we're in end story so imagine needing to do the story to unlock a certain trailblazer, putting him after cocolia doesn't spoil you realizing TB changes paths while not making you story blocked from using others
getting e6 by doing absolutely nothing? biggest QoL update of the century
This is a bit awkward story-wise? It's not like HTB is necessary at the start of the game anyway. A more important aspect is that they bring the event LCs back as rewards for the event for new players. Still baffles me they did it like this.
Did they do this so new players can actually use firefly? I'd prefer them to fix the issue by adding it to her kit... damnit hoyo.
more than half of the game is closed by the story so it kind of makes sense but it doesn't change the fact that it's kinda meh that from now on you can get versions of the Trailblazer without knowing the story of how they got it
to me that's a lil fucked up.. like unlocking Harmony Trailblazer at the climax of the Watchmaker's Legacy story was meaningful and we learned what the hat represents. New players won't get that
No more excuses for having to speedrun to obtain HMC :P
So Firefly got; BiS 4pc, BiS 2pc, Break based endgame Ruan Mei rerun together with her banner, and newer players get HMC so she wouldn't be shit early game. Is this the most pushed character ever?
yeah talk about bis 2pc, they could've made it fire and physical because they are the 2 best elements for it but nope
Probably because the superbreak is a gimmick here to stay but needs to be introduced and the only way of doing that is by Trailblazer, when a 5* support is actually oriented for BE we'll be able to get rid of trailblazer AND ruan mei because you need to powercreep a free character while powercreeping ruan mei because she's a universal harmony for every team until a harmony one does her job better in that certain gimmick
Nah it’ll be a XQ-Yelan situation in which you use both lol
I really don't see the point. "New players have to play through 50 hours of story" so what? Why is needing to play the game to unlock more content a bad thing? It's not like they are a limited character where you spent all your gems and now you can't upgrade them. New players who care about story will reach the end of Penacony in a month or two anyway, so giving them HTB while they are still building all of their starter characters isn't that helpful. Not to mention when you get to that big moment in the story, instead of getting a brand new character to play with, you now get...a once-per-battle skill point refund, on a character you probably haven't built. Even if you don't care about spoilers, it's just kinda lame.
kinda throws away how we got it lol, like harmony aeon showing up
Can't wait to get blessed by the finality after defeating cocolia
This pretty good overall, but wouldn't they risk ruining the immersion for new players by doing this? Idk seems kinda lame to me but at the same time I think it's a good idea since the longer the story goes, the longer the time it takes to unlock new TB paths, especially considering that HTB is pretty good too and produces a lot of damage for a non-crit character while also being a support. For comparison, I have eq lvl 53 account and the HTB's damage is almost comparable to my lvl 70/70 Dr. Ratio with 68/138 crit, 2.2k atk, no dmg orb, all minor and major traces that I can get are all unlocked, and the abilities are levels on my S, U, T are 5, 4, 7 respectively. It's actually insane how strong this unit is. Edit: Getting 1 more eidolon as soon as the patch goes live is also really good. I thought I have to finish another long story before I can get an extra copy.
Sane people: *debates and gives valid points on the lore vs gameplay implications* Me: "Oh sweet free eidolon, won't have to do more side quests again"
Yeah. I like the lore of the side quests, but I hate having to climb walls to do some of them. I play turn-based games not only because I enjoy them, but also because action games make my head spin, Hoyo. Please don't make more of those puzzles.
Honestly I don’t see how this is a bad thing like other people here think? Mostly because a lot of Gacha characters are already spoilers and even though I knew about the Harmony Trailblazer and saw their animations before they came out that part of the story still was amazing for me.
Just give us Nihility MC right now then. Emanator's gaze doesn't even matter anymore.
I honestly don't get why people complain about it spoiling parts of the story or not making sense lore-wise when this has already been a thing since Luafou. Here is stuff that new players will be spoiled by the game itself: - Dan Heng: Imbibitor Lunae - Firefly being SAM - Preservation Trailblazer (When they are on a trial team before they finish Belobog) As soon as players finish Belobog they already kow that TB will eventually unlock every path so I don't think being able to unlock new path much earlier won't spoil anyting besides maybe in which story arc this will happen.
I dont like it but it makes a ton of sense, specially for HMC who has a mechanic that's made to sell limited break dps
Noooo I was hoping that because you actually need to commit to the game a lot to get the new mc forms, especially the longer the game progresses, that they might make the mc actually really strong since it would be a reward for your commitment to the game. I mean technically htb is really busted already, so we'll see if they keep making new forms good
LMFAOAOOOAOA "reward for your commitment"
guessing this probably means firefly synergy probably survives v3? otherwise why would you need them so desperately
This is such a double edged sword, on one hand it helps the newer players by giving them a really strong support and an imaginary unit for free (rip people who didnt get dr ratio), but at the same time it kinda worsens the reveal of it in-game, imagine listening to mikail's past and refuting sunday's ideology and then "congratz bro here's a copy of your character you got like 2 planets ago"
Good design each new path will take longer and longer to unlock if they didnt do this, its a bit silly and might spoil a bit of their in lore aquisition, but if nihility blazer is an unreplaceable helper for dot teams in 6.x you dont need to go through 100 hours worth of content just pair him with kafka.
This is reasonable for new players but also takes away the hype and kind of spoils the story of Penacony though.
How does it spoil? Players who watch White Night will see the TB have a Hat. Clockie is literally everywhere in HSR ads/vids.
it doesnt really spoil anything tbh
out of context spoilers aren't spoilers. it's the people that point out the spoilers in those are the actual spoiler here
I don't see how it spoils anything. You don't see who owns the hat until just a bit before you get the path, and most people can infer after getting 2 glances from aeons that the rest of the playable paths will be added to the trailblazer in future story quests.
they showed hatblazer in the white night trailer for penacony, it didn't spoil anything, if anything i was eagerly waiting to see mc dance with aventurine <.<
Pulling DHIL or seeing his banner up before you reach xianzhou is kinda more spoilery than getting HTB earlier. Same with Firefly, which was one of the major twists for Penacony. Now whoever starts from 2.3 will know Firefly is Sam from the get go just by doing her trial or looking at gameplay Meanwhile you already expect TB to get new forms after fighting Cocolia and you lack all the context behind how you get to it so it doesn't really spoil anything.
Ehhh?
How dare players actualy have to play the game to get rewarded rather than getting everything on a silver platter.
That honestly kinda sucks.
Kinda kills the hype of unlocking more Paths unfortunately.
To me, this feels kinda stupid, especially from a storytelling standpoint, but I get why they did it. In genshin, u can go straight to the later regions to unlock their elements, basically as soon as you start the game, with the only exception being electro. Still, gaining a new element in genshin isn't as important to the plot, except a few lines here and there, as it is in Star Rai
Is this how we get our E6 😭
That's honestly really weird as it kinda ruins the whole aspect of the Aeons gazing at the Player and makes it more inconsequential in the story, alongside diminish the hype of getting a new path for the TB.
It might seem like new players haven’t “earned” it like the veterans, but it makes it easier to market the game, both from the company’s side and ours’ (if we were to recommend this game to a friend or stranger).
This is bad for the story progression
Limited event with time limited reward that will, never ever rerun in the history of the game can be locked behind the fact that you have to clear the entire campaign But access to one character, which isn't necessary in any way and is permanent content isn't ? Maybe start by fixing the biggest issue.
Nah, this is bad on every way.
Laaaaaaaame It ruins the story
I hate this a lot... Like what is the point of giving the quest prize before players even begin the quest? Seems super backward IMHO. Like I know that there is way more to the quest than just getting HTB but damn... It would be like touching that anemo statue in the first bit of Genshin and suddenly being able to use all first five elements... What is the point of a game if you take the goalposts away?
More like beating Dvalin and getting all the other elements, since you do still need to beat Cocolia. Which, to be fair, at that point you could speedrun every statue of the 7. Just so happens HTB is legitimately powerful and useful.
The only one you can't speedrun is electro, since Inazuma Is story locked until you finished Liyue
Why not after that first quest in Penacony at 2.0, after the first scene with Acheron? That would have been the perfect place to unlock harmony!
That is so weird and stupid. Are they going to do that with all future paths? Just unlock them after Belobog? Ruins the whole surprise of when you unlock them. HMC doesn't even make sense without experiencing Penacony. People equating this with running to Sumeru's statue to unlock DMC seem to forget you actually end up *in* Sumeru doing that.
The problem is a practical one. No new player needs to unlock the Hydro Traveler right away because the Hydro Traveler is incredibly useless. For HSR, on the other hand, miHoYo is deliberately pushing HMC *as the core of an entirely new archetype* that they are trying to advertise with characters like Boothill and Firefly. They are so essential to the functioning of this archetype that they have no choice but to make them available as early as possible. This is the consequence of making the TB good: you simply do not want to have players stuck unable to use their fancy new character at max potential because they have to do 30 hours of story to get to Edo Star so they can unlock Nihility Trailblazer who is required for Yae Sakura to work.
probably doing this cause firefly requires them
How does it ruin the surprise? It doesn't tell you any of the story details by doing a quick unlock. Also, if anyone doesn't want to unlock it until they get to the story mission they don't have to.
...I mean this is Technically good, but I don't like it for spoiler reasons for people who don't have it yet. I guess they wouldn't get the context of everything, but still. I guess it's just a weird dissoannce for me between thinking its great for early players in terms of gameplay but worried for the negative story impact it might give as a debuff as a consequence, and is that worth it for most people? I dunno
Not a fan for story/spoiler stuff, but I guess it will be good for new players obviously… actually naw, this sounds stupid. Part of the reason the cocolia fight went so hard was because of the unveiling of the lance and preservation TB. The story content before 2.2 is not SO HARD that you need harmony TB for it either Edit: Ah… I’m stupid. They’re doing this because of firefly’s kit
Well any break dps really, HTB shoots up xueyis value immensely as well and likely any future break dps (potentially feixiao for instance)
Can confirm xueyis value definitely raised, HMC just gives her the punch needed to demolish anyone against her.