Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/50040
This week at Bungie, we introduce Seasonal Challenges.
Welcome to the second-to-last TWAB of Season of the Hunt. Many of you have been navigating the secrets of the Harbinger mission, uncovering randomly rolled Hawkmoons and earning the Radiant Accipiter Exotic ship. Content-wise, we’re coming to a close for the Season, and we’re incredibly excited for what’s to come in just a few short weeks. We’ve been covering some upcoming quality of life changes to Destiny 2, like the return of Umbral Engrams, but it’s almost time to take a peek at fresh content.
Season of the [REDACTED] trailer goes live on February 2, 2021.
Before we get there, we have a new feature to cover, Seasonal Challenges, and a round of weapon-focused sandbox changes to walk through. As a warning, this is a pretty large amount of information in a small space. We've joked about "meaty" TWAB's before, but this one may feel a bit overwhelming if you rush through it. Let's take it slow, step by step, and get through it together in one piece.

Introducing: Seasonal Challenges

Over the last year, we’ve been looking at ways in which we can reduce the amount of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) in Destiny 2. We’ve recently made some changes to Seasons and how Seasonal content is available throughout a given year of Destiny 2. This week, we’re looking to bounties and Bright Dust, introducing a new system not only to remove FOMO, but give fresh ways to earn XP and alternate rewards. To walk us through the ins and outs of Seasonal Challenges, we pass the mic to the Development team.

Dev team: During production of Beyond Light, we started looking at the problems of bounty fatigue and FOMO, as well as Seasonal legibility (i.e., “What is in a Season?” and “How to I engage with it when I log in?”). We created a few goals which we believe will improve the experience:

• Provide a guide to new, returning, and veteran players for what to do today/this week.
• Guide the player through the Seasonal content, week-over-week.
• Encourage players to engage with complexities and nuances of the Seasonal activity and rituals.
• Reduce the penalties on XP and Bright Dust for missing a given week.

To solve these goals, we are introducing a new pursuit type for players – Seasonal Challenges. The Seasonal Challenges live on their own page, are accessed through the Quest Log or Season Pass, and are separated by week.
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Here’s a quick breakdown of how this feature works:

• Every week, for the first 10 weeks of a Season, between 3 and 10 new Challenges appear automatically for players.
  
  • Some of the Challenges deal with the Seasonal content.
  • Others push players to complete strikes, Gambit, and the Crucible, or to focus on non-activity focused Destiny rituals, like gaining Power, unlocking Seasonal Artifact mods, or improving guns and armor.
• These Challenges can only be completed once per account, but once they become available, these Challenges can be completed at any time before the end of the Season, and do not need to be started or picked up from a vendor.
  
  • As an example, if a player doesn’t play for weeks 2 through 4, they can return on week 5 and have all of those Challenges waiting for them!
• Completing each Challenge awards XP, contributing to your Season Pass ranks.
  
  • Other rewards could be Bright Dust, Seasonal currency, or other interesting items!

In moving away from weekly bounties, which were restricted to broad objectives tied to ritual activities, we have taken more leeway with creating some interesting or more difficult Challenges. These may be things you are already doing, or things that test your ability. Some examples include:

• Defeating Primeval Envoys in Gambit
• Defeating enemies in Nightfall: The Ordeal with Seasonal weapons
• Gaining Infamy or Valor ranks
• Acquiring the ritual weapon and its cosmetic ornaments
• Winning rounds in Trials of Osiris
• Completing a Grandmaster Nightfall

Not all the Challenges will require that level of accomplishment, but the harder or longer the Challenge is, the more experience it rewards. Challenges that focus on the Seasonal activity and ritual mostly need the Season Pass to complete, but most of the ritual focused Challenges can be completed without the Season Pass. Overall, roughly 60% of the Seasonal Challenges do not require the Season Pass.
With the changes above, we are removing weekly bounties from the three ritual vendors (Zavala, Shaxx, and Drifter), Banshee-44, and the Seasonal vendor. These vendors will still have daily bounties which reward XP, and the three ritual vendors will still have repeatable bounties for those of you who want to pursue additional XP and Bright Dust.
Lastly – most of the Challenges disappear after the Season they were introduced, and anything that isn’t claimed will be lost. We don’t add any new Challenges after Week 10 – which should give everyone a few weeks to clean up any Challenges they didn’t finish. Any Challenge that rewards unique or Seasonal items (currencies, lore books, Seasonal weapons, etc.) – can be completed as long as the Seasonal activity is in the game, but XP awarded for completing the challenge will only be available during the season it was introduced.
Let’s Talk Bright Dust
Back before Beyond Light launched, we discussed some of the goals around the changes to Bright Dust. As a refresher, we wanted to change the way you earn Bright Dust and move more towards account-specific paths to give players with only one character significantly more Bright Dust than they've been earning over the last year. In Season 13, we’ll be continuing to move toward these goals by adding Bright Dust onto Seasonal Challenges.
Since you no longer have to purchase weekly ritual bounties, each of the strike, Crucible, and Gambit Seasonal Challenges will award between 75 and 300 Bright Dust. We are also introducing an end-of-Season Bright Dust bonus – if you complete (nearly) all of the Seasonal Challenges, we are awarding a single 4,000 Bright Dust pile.
Additionally, each ritual vendor challenge (“Complete 8 bounties”) awards 120 Bright Dust for each character who completes it each week. And because this is prompted by the removal of weekly bounties, the only Seasonal Challenges that will be awarding Bright Dust are the ones that both Season Pass owners and free players can complete. Here’s a quick breakdown of how much Bright Dust you should expect to earn over the course of Season 13.

Seasonal Challenges Bright Dust (All Players)

• Free Seasonal Activities – 6,000
• Seasonal Extra – 4,000
• Total – 10,000 Bright Dust

Season Pass Bright Dust

• Free Path – 7,500 (All Players)
• Paid Path – 3,000 (Players who own Season Pass)
• Total – 10,500 Bright Dust

Weekly Ritual Vendor Challenge Bright Dust (All Players)

• 120 Bright Dust per ritual vendor, per character, per week
  
  • 14,040 total if completing all required weekly Challenges over the course of Season 13

Additionally, we still plan to offer weekly and repeatable Bright Dust bounties for Seasonal events, giving you a bit more Bright Dust towards desired rewards.
As a final note, please be sure to claim all Seasonal Challenges that award Bright Dust prior to the end of a Season. Once a Season ends, associated Challenges and their Bright Dust rewards will expire and can no longer be claimed.

It’s always exciting when we bring a new feature online for Destiny 2. We hope that the changes detailed above make it easier to create goals to complete each week. As always, we’re eager to hear your feedback once you start finishing your first Seasonal Challenges, so please sound off with your thoughts!

Back to the Sandbox

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Every Season, we have a collection of changes to the Destiny 2 sandbox to spice things up a bit. This Season, we’re making some targeted changes to weapon archetypes that need some love as well as beginning some preparations for crossplay.

Dev team: In preparation for crossplay, coming later this year, we’re making some changes to the Recoil stat.
Currently, several weapon archetypes have their Recoil reduced by around 40% (dependent on archetype) when using mouse and keyboard. This results in an issue where players on mouse and keyboard are able to largely ignore the stability weapon stat, creating unintended discrepancies in weapon performance between controllers and mouse and keyboard.
The following weapon archetypes will have their mouse and keyboard Recoil adjusted closer to controller (reduced the difference from ~40% to ~20%).

• Auto Rifle
• Scout Rifle
• Pulse Rifle
• Submachine Gun
• Hand Cannon
• Machine Gun

In the case of Pulse Rifle, Submachine Gun, and Machine Gun, we will also be introducing some buffs. In some cases, these weapons will have less Recoil across both Controller and mouse and keyboard input methods compared to what’s in the game today.

• Submachine Guns are largely outclassed by Auto Rifles at medium range, and by Sidearms at short range, with player feedback often mentioning how hard they are to control. To address this feedback, we’re introducing the following change:
  
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Submachine Gun by 24%.
• Pulse Rifles with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
  
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Pulse Rifle by 7%.
• Machine Guns with the mouse and keyboard changes were kicking a little too much.
  
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Machine Gun by 9.5%.

We will pay close attention to how these changes play out when they go live, and plan to revisit individual archetypes in a future update as needed.
Outside of Recoil adjustments, we will also be tuning a few weapon archetypes in Season 13. Looking through backend data and community feedback, we landed on the following:
Buffs

• Rocket Launchers have fallen behind other Heavy weapons in most measures of effectiveness, we’re pushing them more into a burst damage role.
  
  • Increased Rocket Launcher damage by 30%.
  • Exotic Rocket Launchers have been adjusted individually and are affected by this change to different degrees.
  • Paired with the buffs to reserves from last Season, we’re hoping you’ll explode many more things in Season 13!
• Fusion Rifle usage is very low, and they feel like an unreliable choice in Crucible compared to Shotguns.
  
  • Increased Fusion Rifle damage falloff start distance based on Range stat. (6% with 0 Range, 16% with 100 Range)
  • Reduced camera movement from firing a Fusion Rifle by 9.5%.
• Breech Grenade Launcher usage is very low (outside of Mountaintop). We believe part of the reason is that the loop of "hold the trigger to arm, then release to detonate” is challenging to execute, particularly since projectiles can bounce off targets if the trigger is held
  
  • Breech Grenade Launcher projectiles will now detonate on impact with a character, even if holding the trigger.

Nerfs

• While Sniper Rifle usage has dropped in Crucible, we’ve observed that it’s hard to challenge someone with a Sniper Rifle – even if you get the first shot on an enemy, they can often respond and win the fight.
  
  • Increased ADS flinch to Snipers when taking damage from other players
• Swords are extremely dominant in PvE. At this time, 65% of players are using Swords for the majority of gameplay encounters in Destiny 2. While we are introducing a buff to Rocket Launchers to make them a bit more enticing, we feel that Swords do too much damage compared to other options.
  
  • Reduced Sword damage by 15%.

Exotic Changes and Bug Fixes

• Some Exotic weapons lose their buffs when you switch weapons, which is intended. They would also lose their buffs when pulling out your Ghost Shell, which is not intended. Fixed that issue on these weapons:
  
  • Ace of Spades
  • Tarrabah
  • Hawkmoon
• Borealis and Hard Light now have a custom (quite short) animation for switching damage type.
  
• Duality
  
  • Increased damage falloff distance by 1.25m (while both firing from the hip and aiming down sights).
  • Reduced maximum buff stacks from 7 to 5, each stack now grants more of a damage bonus, extended buff duration slightly.
• Sturm will once again reload any equipped Special slot weapon on kill provided the Special weapon's clip isn't full already and there's available reserve ammo.
  
• Fixed an issue that was preventing Merciless from increasing its charge rate on non-lethal hits.
  

Ah, and before we go – we are planning to take a quick tuning pass on Arbalest. This won’t be ready in time for February 9, but we are expecting to have this touched later in Season 13!

Now, we know it can be difficult to understand the scale of buffs and nerfs without having these changes in your hands. Not to mention, there will be some new perks for you to hunt as you start navigating content in Season of the [REDACTED]. As always, we’re excited to see these changes out in the wild on February 9, and will be eager to hear your feedback.

Crimson Days

Each year, we look to February as a time to celebrate bonds of friendship throughout the community. Guardians have come to know this celebration as Crimson Days. It was one of our first “Seasonal” events in Destiny 1, a tradition that we carried to Destiny 2. While there was great enjoyment of Crimson Days, we feel that it’s been missing the mark in terms of quality over the last few years.
As such, we have made the decision to discontinue Crimson Days moving forward. While we’ll miss the event, this move will allow us to maintain focus for alternate Seasonal offerings, ranging from quests to activities and more. We have quite a bit planned for Season of the [REDACTED] and our hope is that we’ve maintained, or even improved, the quality you’ve come to expect from this upcoming release.
Some of you may be asking about the fate of Crimson Doubles, our once-a-year Crimson Days playlist. This mode is currently being shifted to the Destiny Content Vault but may return in the future.
Many thanks to every Guardian who has joined us over the years for this event. Crimson decorations may not be hung in the Tower, but we have no doubts that you’ll continue to form Crimson Bonds over the years to come.

BugTrax

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For those who may be new to the TWAB, welcome to the Player Support Report. This section is dedicated to known issues, active investigations, and pending updates for Destiny 2. Our Player Support team navigates the Help forum daily, collecting info on new issues and dishing out help articles.
This is their report on the most frequently reported issues of the last week.

CRUCIBLE TOKENS AND FRAGMENT QUESTS
Due to the updates to the vendor progression system, Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts are no longer needed and will be deprecated into Junk that will delete as a full stack starting in Season 13. Additionally, current Stasis Fragment Quests will be deprecated at the end of Season of the Hunt. Players are advised to turn in all Crucible Tokens and Crucible Token Gifts and finish all available Stasis Fragment Quests before Season 13 starts.
KNOWN ISSUES
While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help forum:

• Stasis abilities can be difficult to distinguish between enemy and friendly for colorblind players.
• The Double Trouble Triumph is unobtainable.
• In the Deep Stone Crypt raid, the augment lockout timer occasionally resets during the final encounter against Taniks.
• During the final fight against the Sanctified Mind in the Garden of Salvation raid, sometimes a shielded tether box can become tethered instead of the correct glowing tether box.
• Hunter legs clip through the Ten-Grasp Sword Sparrow.
• In the Last Wish raid, the Shuro Chi puzzle room plates don't work if a Titan bubble or Warlock well are placed on them.
• The Titan Phenotype Plasticity Helm eye clusters no longer glow red.
• Weekly and daily elemental kill bounties have stopped rotating off of Void.
• When overcharging grenades while using the Voidwalker top tree subclass as a Warlock, Super energy stops charging.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

[Bird Noises Intensify]

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It’s been fun watching Hawkmoon clips and montages throughout the Season. With recently introduced random rolls, players have been pushing the limits of this Exotic, taking on 1v1 encounters in the Crucible that they may have otherwise avoided. This week, our top pick not only got a sweet roll on perks, but a killer roll on audio, too!
Movie of the Week: Ting Ting Ting Ting
Video Link
Movie of the Week: Deep Stone Lullaby Violin/Piano Cover
Video Link
Movie of the Week: …That’s a lot of Hawkmoon
Video Link
As always, if you'd like to submit your creation to be featured in a future TWAB, make sure to create a post on the Community Creations portal of Bungie.net.

Credit Where It’s Due

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Every day, we take a moment to scroll through various social media apps to take a look at community artwork. We’re always awestruck by the talents that many of you possess, and eager to share your works with a wider audience.
Here’s a quick roundup of some sweet art, and direct links to their authors. Give them a follow if you want to see more of their stuff!
Art of the Week: Art Sharing

destiny art share!!! spread the positivity, doesn't matter how frequently you do art or how many pieces you've made - post your favorites!! #Destiny2Art #DestinyArtShare pic.twitter.com/bq6hHJrCLD
— 🥀alex🥀🏳️‍🌈 (@miyagiie) January 25, 2021

Art of the Week: Eris

나는야 내일부터 월급쟁이 #냙서 pic.twitter.com/MI6Y6Gi1LY
— 🧅김냘본™🍺 (@NyarNyarbon) January 17, 2021

Cheers, and make sure to tag your content with some form of #Destiny2Art so we can find you easily!
That’s it for this week, folks. Season of the [REDACTED] is almost here. We’ll have some patch previews to cover in the TWAB next week, so stop by if you’re interested!

If this gets 7 likes we'll add a new LZ on Europa next Season.
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) January 27, 2021

We’ll see you again next week, bright and early on Tuesday morning.
Cheers,
dmg04

About God Field

So recently I noticed that 5th gen, Pekora and Matsuri have started streaming/playing the game God Field. Suisei & Shion also joined in to play on Pekora's stream. Pekora also mentioned potentially doing a tournament for the game (not confirmed yet though). It seems like we might continue to see more streams of this game within Hololive.
However, I haven't seen anyone TLing any stream clips, which is a shame since it's a very funny game, made even more entertaining when Hololive members are playing it! I suspect it's because the game isn't well known to the overseas audience, so I decided to make this guide for TLers and EN fans who are interested but don't understand the game. I've provided examples from Hololive streams so that you can practice following along.
If you don't know anything about God Field, in short, it's a party card game. You could say it's like the Mario Kart of card games, and by that I mean it's a mixture of skill and unfair RNG mechanics and lucky card draws. The game also has the weird ability to make players start role playing, somehow due to its weird "God" theming and its unusual card and status names. You'll see players start to say silly things as they attack each other cards like "Goodbye Sword" or inflict weird status effects like "Fog". But these aspects are what creates very hilarious interactions and dialogue between the players, some of which I'll include at the end of this guide as a bonus.
You can also play the game for free here, but there's no tutorial, so I recommend reading this guide as you go.

Basics

The goal is to get your opponent's HP to 0. There are two main card types, attack (攻) cards and defence (守) cards. During your turn, you use attack cards to attack an opponent. The opponent can use defence cards to defend against it. 1ATK is equal to 1DEF.
EX: Suisei attacks Pekora with the 14 ATK "Violent Flail" (a very fitting card for her). Pekora defends with "Iron Armor", a 5DEF card, so she takes 9 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3161)
When defending, you can stack as many defence cards as you want at once. But for attacking, it's a bit different. You can only use 1 attack card normally, but you can combine "combo attack" cards to make a stronger attack. You can tell if it's a combo attack card if it has a "+" in its damage, for example "+3 攻" or "+3 ATK". Note that combo attack cards don't have to be used in a combo, they can also be used as standalone attacks.
EX: Polka attacks Lamy with a monstrous 10+13+10 card combo, a total of 33 damage. Lamy defends with a 1, 3, and 9 DEF combo, a total of 13 DEF, so she takes 20 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3314)

Elements

Some cards are color-coded, meaning they have an element. Elemental attacks can only be blocked with an elemental defence of a certain element. Fire & water (red & blue) counter each other, and stone & wood (grey & orange) counter each other. Elemental attacks are very hard to deal with, because you often won't have the specific elemental defence needed in your hand. Elemental cards themselves are also more uncommon than non-elemental cards. Note that you can use elemental defence cards to defend against non-elemental attacks too.
EX: Lamy attacks Botan with "Fire Crossbow", a +4 ATK fire card. Note that she used a combo card by itself instead of making a combo, which was actually a good play, because it preserved the card's element, making it so that Botan needed water element defence to defend it. Of course, Botan didn't have it, so *she took 4 damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2603)
*This is a funny moment during a 3v3 team game of "Botan/Polka/Suisei" vs "Pekora/Nene/Lamy", where Botan says she'll "be a wall" for her teammates, and proceeds to get brutally focus-fired by the opposing team. More on why that happens later.
Actually, there are two more elements that behave quite differently: light (yellow) and dark (purple). Light cannot be blocked, and can substitute as Fire/WateStone/Wood for both attacks and defence. So it's like a wildcard element, as well as being virtually undefendable (a few cards can block it). Dark can be blocked by anything, even by non-elemental defence, but it kills the opponent if even 1 damage goes through. As you can imagine, both of these elements are very scary to deal with.
EX1: Shion attacks Pekora with "Justice Lance", a 5 ATK light card. Note that none of Pekora's defence cards are lit up, showing that they can't be selected, because again, light element attacks are unblockable. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5623)
EX2: Botan attacks Nene with "Killer Fork", a 5 ATK dark card. Nene didn't have any defence cards, so she died despite having 24HP due to the dark element's instant kill effect. Note that Botan likely knew she had no defence cards, because in the early rounds of this 3v3 team game, Team Suisei/Botan/Polka all attacked Nene, causing her to use her up defence cards early on. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2977)
You might be thinking that if you combine something like +10 ATK cards with a 5 ATK dark element card, you have the recipe for an OP combo. But actually, stacking attack cards of different elements will cause the entire attack to become non elemental, so you'll lose the "dark instant-kill" effect. However, there are combo cards which are elemental, so if you're lucky enough to get a +5 ATK dark element, you can combine it with a 5 ATK dark element to create a very lethal dark element attack.

Tip for Following Along as a Viewer

It can be hard to add up all the cards and consider the elements for a given interaction, especially when the players play very fast. Some cards are also both attack and defence cards, meaning they have an ATK and DEF value, making it extra hard to understand if you don't know the kanji. So as a tip, the game itself will show the total ATK, total DEF, and elements of a given interaction. It's shown below each of the two "card columns" of the field.
And as mentioned before, usable cards will light up in your hand, so you can tell if the streamer was forced to take an attack because they had no cards to play, or if they took it in purpose to save their cards for later.
EX1: Polka attacks with a 9ATK card and +10 Light ATK *card. Remember that non elemental and light don't combine, so it's actually just a non elemental attack altogether. Note the "19 攻" near the bottom left, showing the total attack, and the fact that it's black means that it's non elemental. On Nene's side, it shows a black "15 守" , meaning the total defence is 15, and is also non elemental. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2679)
*The light card Polka used is called "Meteor", hence why Polka says Suisei's catchphrase in reference to it.
EX2: Lamy attacks Botan with 3 wood ATK and +1 light ATK. Since light substitutes as wood, you can see in the bottom-left that it becomes an orange "+4 攻", or in other woods, a 4 damage wood attack. Once again, Botan is unable to defend, since elemental defence is very rare. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2926)

AoE Attacks

Some attacks have a "%" in their damage, for example "50% 9ATK". What this means is that they have a % chance of hitting each opponent with that much damage. So with "50% 9ATK", if you're in a 8 player free for all, you can think of it as flipping a coin for each of your 7 opponents, and if it lands on heads, they get hit by 9ATK. Depending on luck, the attack can either hit everyone, miss everyone, or do some mix of hitting/missing. AoE attacks are all elemental by design as well, making them extra annoying.
EX: Polka attacks Pekora/Nene/Lamy with "Rain Deity's Sword", a 50% 9ATK water card. And to her luck, it successfully hits all three of them. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2771)

Spells

Spells work basically like how they do in RPGs; they cost MP, and they can be used infinitely. You'll notice after a player uses them the first time, that the card stays in the bottom right of the player's hand. It's sort of like they "learned" the spell. Most spells are simply elemental attacks that cost MP, but there are some other unique effects they can do as well. In general, spells are much stronger than regular attack cards in this game, since they're essentially infinitely reusable elemental attacks. But they're usually hard to use since MP is a somewhat uncommon resource, and spells themselves are uncommon as well.
EX: Pekora vs Shion. Pekora has a measly 2HP, and Shion uses the spell "Ice", a 4ATK water spell that costs 2MP, to finish her off. Luckily, Pekora draws "Moonlight Shield" just in time, which reflect spells, and manages to survive. But if you recall, spells are reusable, so Shion just uses "Ice" the next turn. Miraculously, Pekora draws "Moonlight Sword", which also can reflect spells, and survives yet another turn. Finally, for a third time, Shion casts "Ice", but this time Pekora is all out of luck. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5637)
Spells actually have an interesting side effect. Because of how card draw works (you replenish the same amount of cards that you use), when using a spell, it counts as if you "used it" even though it remained in your hand. So your hand size will increase by 1 every time you use it, meaning it gives +1 card advantage. So if you have a cheap cost spell, you can cast it many times over the course of a game to continuously increase your hand size - and thus create a massive card advantage over your opponent. If you've played card games before, you'll realize that this is a very powerful effect.
EX: Pekora attacks Shion with a 6 ATK wood spell. Watch Pekora's hand in the bottom-left, and notice that she gains a card slot in her hand when she uses the spell. Also note that her hand is much bigger than the default hand size, as she's already used the spell a bunch before. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5152)

Statuses

There are very non-traditional status effects in this game, so I'll explain each one:
Fog: The background becomes blue, and various things become blocked with a blue fill. You can't see what cards other players play, unless they're attacking you. You also can't see anyone's HP/MP/Money, besides your own, and you cannot select who you target when you attack.
EX: Shion uses the "Fog" spell on Pekora. Pekora actually has a consumable that can cure it called "Heart Shell", which can cure all statuses, so she uses it. But "Heart Shell" is single-use, and if you recall, spells are infinite use, so Shion just casts "Fog" again right after, since the MP cost is low. The interaction itself is funny, with Shion constantly teasing her about "absolutely wanting Pekora to not be able to see~" (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5547)
Dream: All cards you draw have a 50% of being "disguised" - meaning they can actually be a different card then what it visually appears as. It'll reveal what the card really is when you use it. A "disguised" card will have a misty filter on it. Note that cards can't turn into cards of another type - meaning you can't defend with a defence card, but then it turns into an attack/spell/consumable card with 0 DEF. It'll always turn into another defence card. And if it's an elemental defence card, it'll turn into an elemental defence card of the same element. This makes it so that you can't play a "wrong" or "invalid" card as a result of dream.
EX: In a close game of Pekora vs Matsuri, where both players have 7HP left, Matsuri attacks Pekora with a 11ATK combo. Pekora's only defence card is a potentially fake "Flame Boots", a 3DEF card, so she thinks she will lose, especially since elemental cards tend to have low DEF, so even if it's fake, it'll still probably turn into another weak card. However, it's actually revealed to be "Flame Armor", a 12DEF card, so she survives with excitement. (Volume Warning https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4706)
Flash: You can only use up to 1 defence card when defending.
EX: Polka hits Botan with *"Horror Wheel", a +11 ATK card. Botan counters with "Uranus Ring", which inflicts flash to whoever damaged her, so Polka gets the "Flash" status. Then, Lamy attacks the "Flashed" Polka with the 9 ATK "Power Halberd", which is difficult to defend since she can only play 1 defence card. To top it off, Polka's under "Dream" as well, meaning she doesn't know if her 1 defence card will be good enough, since it may change into another, weaker card. This interaction shows a special yellow text (まぶしい) that translates to "bright". So while getting hit, Polka says "It's bright! What's with this brightness?" (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=1043)
*You might be wondering why Polka used a combo attack on its own, since unlike in the previous similar example with Lamy, it's non-elemental, so it should be better to combine it with another attack. It's because she was new to the game - Nene actually starts explaining it to her about "+" and "combo" cards during that timestamp after she plays it.
Dark Cloud: If you're hit with a % attack, it has a 100% chance of hitting.
EX: Shion hits Pekora with "Flare Axe", a 50% 10ATK fire card. Pekora is already under Dark Cloud, so she gets hit. This interaction shows a special purple text (不可避) which translates to "inevitable", as in it's inevitable the hit will land. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5967)
Cold->Fever->Hell->Heaven: These disease statuses give -1/-2/-5/+5 HP per turn. They're related in that diseases can get "worse" at a 5% chance each turn, or when you catch another disease. When a disease becomes worse, it turns into the "next stage" disease. Meaning cold turns into fever, which turns into hell, which turns into heaven, and after heaven, you'll simply die.
Heaven is quite odd since unlike the other diseases, it gives you HP per turn rather than dealing damage per turn. But instead you have a 5% chance of dying at the end of your turn. So it can create some thrilling situations where a player is nearly unkillable because of the +5HP per turn, but also can die at any moment if their luck turns bad.
EX: Lamy uses "Heaven Herb" on herself, which gives +20 MP, but also puts herself under "heaven". Note the +5HP that appears after as a result of "heaven". Polka questions the play at first, since heaven is very dangerous so you'd rather give it to someone else, but then she realizes you can cure it later. So Lamy used it as a desperate way to heal herself, as her HP was running low. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3144)

Common Keywords

There are some common card effects that are important to know.
Bounce Attack/Spell - Redirects an attack/spell to anyone in the game, even to the person who bounced it! A quirk of this mechanic is that the attack/spell will become unblockable if you bounce it and it redirects to yourself.
EX: During a team battle, Polka uses the light element spell "Meteor" on Lamy. Normally, light is unblockable - but Lamy plays "Sky Helm" which bounces spells. It then bounces to... (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3010) Polka's ally Botan, causing Polka's attack to kill her own teammate, who only had 7HP, and no way to counter light element.
Reflect Attack/Spell - Reflects the attack/spell back to the attackecaster. Fairly self explanatory, but it's good to be aware of, as it's the common cause of funny moments, along with "Bounce".
EX: Pekora vs Shion. Pekora has only 7HP and is on her last legs, while Shion has 22HP. Shion plays "Ice Age", a 75% 30ATK water spell. Shion thinks she just won, as it's nearly impossible to deal with 30 water damage. But... (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5268) Pekora uses "Moonlight Sword", which is an attack card that can also be used as a defence card to reflect spells, and makes a comeback.
Cast Spell w/o Cost: You can combine a card with this effect to cast a spell for free. This is why you'll see players occasionally cast a spell without enough MP, and combine it with a seemingly unrelated armoweapon.
EX: Polka casts the spell "Meteor" which costs 7MP on Lamy, but she only has 1MP. She then combines it with the consumable card "Spiritual Doll", which allows a spell to be casted with no cost. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3074)
Block Attack/Spell - It allows you to fully block certain kinds of attacks, regardless of how high the damage is.
Counterattack - A defensive keyword that activates upon receiving damage. You'll see counterattack on a set of cards known as "Elemental Planet Rings", like the "Uranus Ring" mentioned before. They all have very different effects. Some effects scale based on how much damage you took, meaning you might intentionally take more damage to boost the effect. A common mistake is to use defensive cards with a counterattack card, because it may weaken the special effect.
EX: Pekora vs Shion. Shion counters Pekora's 11ATK "Gravity Mace" with "Saturn Ring", which counterattacks with double the received damage, as stone element. So Pekora was countered with 22 stone ATK. If Shion instead tried to fully block the attack while using Saturn Ring, it would've dealt no damage. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=6025)
Inflict "X Status" on Damage - If the attack deals at least 1 damage, it'll also inflict a status.
EX: During the 5th Gen FFA, Lamy attacks Polka with "Bogus Spear", which has "inflict Dream on hit". Polka gets scared, saying "I have to completely defend this!". Earlier in the stream, nearly everyone had spent a long time under the effects of "Dream", so she was afraid of experiencing it again. It's a very scary status to be afflicted with. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=4301)

Consumables

These are mostly cards that simply heal HP, MP, or cure statuses. Though there are actually some with much more wild effects, like the "Heaven Herb" mentioned previously. An interesting part about these cards is that you can use them on someone else, so for example you can heal allies in team matches. One more notable feature is that they're in a separate category from attacks or spells, and this game only has blocking cards that work against attacks and spells. As a result, there is no way to block consumable cards.
EX: Continuing from a previous example, Pekora uses "Heart Shell" to cure her teammate Lamy's "Heaven". She was afraid that Lamy would die from heaven, leaving her in a 1v2 situation, so she waited a few turns for it to heal her, then cured her. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3237)

Money

You may have noticed that both players and cards have "￥" on them. "￥", or money, is used for three specific cards: "buy", "sell", and "exchange". These cards are fairly common, have very unique effects, and can be OP when used right, so I'll explain them thoroughly.
Buy: target a player, then the game chooses a random card from their hand. You then have the option of buying that card from them. The real power of this card comes from its glitchy side effect - similar to spells, after buying a card, it actually increases the buyer's hand size by 1. But unlike spells, it also decreases the seller's hand size by 1, meaning this gives a +2 card advantage. You might notice a player's hand size becoming extremely small or big, as a result of multiple uses of this card. Needless to say, this card is extremely powerful.
EX: Pekora gets lucky and manages to buy Shion's "Real Ghost Sword", a 12ATK lifesteal card. This effect is very powerful and essentially means the card has 24ATK in terms of value. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5331)
Sell: choose one of the cards in your hand, and target a player to forcefully sell it to. It has the same side effect as "buy" cards, meaning you lose 1 hand size for using it, and the opponent gains 1 hand size. So at first it seems like a terrible card since it has -2 card advantage, but it actually has its uses. For example, what happens if you sell a $30 card to someone with $0 money? The victim is forced to buy the card no matter what. If they're too poor, they pay in MP instead. If they have insufficient MP, then they pay in HP. So they can actually die from being too poor to buy a card. So when used on a poor player, this card actually becomes an unblockable MP drain, and/or an unblockable attack.
EX: Suisei says "Peko-chan, Peko-chan, looks like you don't have any money right now" and then sells her an expensive Heart Shell. To add insult to injury, she already has two Heart Shells, and because she has no money, she lost 15MP instead, which she crucially needed because she has 3 useful spells in her hand. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3217)
Exchange: allows you to freely exchange your HP, MP, and money at a 1:1:1 ratio. This card is pretty straight forward, and doesn't have any crazy side effects like the others. The thing to note is that there are very few ways to gain HP/MP/money in this game, so this card is one of the most versatile cards in the game and combos well with all HP/MP/money cards.
EX: Shion vs Pekora. Shion has been using the spell "Treasure", which costs 5MP but gives 10$, to reach a total of $60. And as her HP runs low, she uses "exchange" to turn 60$ into 40HP and 20MP. As a result of this, while taking Pekora's attacks, she was able to fully heal herself, and leave herself with 20MP for a strong spell later, all the while increasing her hand size by a lot due to spamming the spell "Treasure". (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5798)
These cards all belong to the "trade" category, so like "consumables", they aren't considered an "attack/spell", so they cannot be blocked.
Note that money is not used to play cards, this value is strictly only for buying and selling. Cards don't have any cost to play them (except MP for spell cards).

Guardians

Certain cards will allow players to summon elemental guardians, which have a 25% chance of casting cards after every opponent's turn. The cards they cast depend on their element, the dark guardian for example will randomly choose between 5 dark element cards. Also, guardians don't need MP to cast spells. Guardians have a 10% of disappearing when the player they belong to gets hit. There's also a money guardian and a healing guardian, which are less deadly since they don't attack, but still are quite annoying if left alone for too long.
In general, guardians are a huge threat, as it's impossible to keep up with the amount of elemental defence cards needed to block their elemental attacks. The value they generate over time is so threatening that players in a team or FFA game will often start focus firing you for having one.
EX1: Pekora uses "Guardian Sealed Jar" on her teammate Lamy, to give her a guardian. She gets the darkness guardian, which has the potential to win the game on its own by constantly sending out dark element attacks. However, its threat causes Lamy to get *brutally targeted by Team Suisei & Polka, and eventually the guardian falls (Summoning https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3042) (Disappears https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3115)
*If you remember, Lamy had to use "Heaven Herb" on herself before due to her HP getting low. This was from the same game and happens right after this. So her HP was getting low because of the guardian her ally Pekora gave her.
EX2: Remember the Botan moment from before, where she says "I'll be a wall for everyone!" in a 3v3 game? The reason she said this was actually because she played "Guardian Sealed Jar" before, and thus you can see she has a guardian icon next to her on the top right. So she was playfully speaking to the fact that she drew the opposing team's aggro. And indeed, she ends up taking the brunt of the opposing team's attacks and dies first for her team. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=2603)

Apocalypse

There's an optional setting in the game where when a certain number of turns pass, the apocalypse starts. When this happens, the background changes, and there's a high chance of drawing "devil" cards, which have various effects, most notable of which is just straight up receiving unblockable damage. It's basically a "hurry-up" mode - a way to stop games from being too long. Another fun interaction is that since devils count as cards, you can actually: draw a devil, take damage, devil gets discarded/used so you draw another card, you draw ANOTHER devil, take damage, and repeat. So you can simply die from endless devil damage, all from one card draw!
Pekora/Matsuri/Polka didn't use the setting, so there are no examples of it. But I explained it in case one of them uses it in the future.

Playing The Game

Within the RNG, the game has some interesting mechanics and strategy, which I've tried my best to cover. But if you want to understand the streams fully, I ultimately recommend playing the game yourself, as there's many unique card effects that I haven't covered. In addition to effects, knowing the card names and draw rarity adds much needed context to what the players are saying. There are times when players will play multiple powerful rare cards in a row, which adds to the hilarity.
The game is free and playable on browser and mobile. There's a "bible" on the top-right where you can check card effects and rarities, and modes where you can play vs AI, with friends, or with strangers. This game is very fun with friends, but is boring alone IMO. However, there's no tutorial, and the UI is confusing, so you should familiarize yourself with the game first before introducing it to friends.
It also has a NND style chat, so if you're wondering about the floating text that sometimes appears, it's the hololive members typing it.
The game uses odd "God"-themed terms for things, which I avoided using in the guide to prevent confusion. But you'll need to know them to play the game, and the players themselves make references to it, so here's a chart:

God Field's Terms	Regular Game Terms
Artifact	Card
Curse	Status
Miracle	Spell
Sundry	Consumable
Ascension	Death
Seizure	Death by Heaven
Forgive	Allow (allow an action to happen without playing any cards in response)
Pray	Pass (if you have no attack cards, pass and draw a card)
Bible	Glossary / Card Library
Gift Rate	Draw Chance
Phenomena	Global Effect
Prophet	Player
Hidden Melee	Private Lobby

Again, one of the charms of the game is how it makes the players "role-play" as they attack each other with unethical cards combos and statuses, so I'm hoping that whoever TLs any clips can capture the nuance and wordplay well. Thanks for reading!

Bonus: Stream Highlights

• Pekora vs Shion. Pekora gets excited as she draws "Dangerous Pestle", a 30ATK light card, a powerful and unblockable card which has the effect of randomly attacking anyone in the game. Shion's HP is below 30. Pekora gets cocky towards Shion as she uses it. Can you guess what happens next? https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=5610 The attack hits herself and ends up losing the game soon after because of it.
• Shion vs Pekora. With Pekora at 46HP and Shion at 17HP, Shion's chances look dim. In addition, she takes Pekora's "Gravity Mace", an 11 ATK card, without defending, instead countering with "Saturn Ring", a defence card that counterattacks with double the damage that she just took to the attacker as stone element - so 22 stone damage is dealt to Pekora. But Pekora still has 24HP, so the situation still seems bad. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=6025) Until Shion plays a "Waterfall", a 25ATK water spell, which is just enough to make a nearly perfect sudden comeback against Pekora.
• Pekora vs Matsuri. Pekora attacks with an insane 31 attack combo. And the base attack card, "Ghost Sword", has lifesteal, so the whole attack gets lifesteal as well. (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4040) But Matsuri counters with "Reflecting Sword" which reflects non elemental attacks. Now, not only does Pekora have to deal with the attack, but Matsuri gets "ownership" of the attack, meaning she gets the lifesteal as well.
• Matsuri vs Pekora, Matsuri has been building up MP all game, making Pekora think that a massively strong spell was coming, which forced her to waste turns playing defensively. But it was just a bluff, and Matsuri exchanges all her MP for HP instead. Pekora says "Eh? Suddenly your HP is at 90... wait a second, weren't you saying you were gonna use that MP for an attack?" (https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=4319)
• Team Battle: Polka noticed that Pekora did not block an attack in the previous turn and plays the "weakest" card in the game. Botan says "There's no way you'll die, right?" https://youtu.be/LugGHWGuVIc?t=3357 Self-explanatory.
• Matsuri vs Polka: Polka inflicted Dream onto Matsuri earlier, so Matsuri cures herself with "Heart Shell". Then Polka hits her with "Bogus Spear", which inflicts "Dream" upon damage. Polka then teases her about making her dream forever in a creepy voice. Later, they have a cute convo about waking up when Matsuri finally cures herself again. https://youtu.be/8qhduadHdtM?t=2502
• 5th Gen FFA: Earlier, Botan used "String of Fate" which causes a random "Phenomena", which is like a global status effect. It caused "Mushroom Outbreak", which causes everyone to lose control of their attack for 3 turns, as the game automatically plays random attacks cards for them. This causes Nene to unwillingly attack Lamy with an overkill combo, consisting of "God Sword", a 30ATK card, and "Angel Bow", a +15 ATK card, making a total of 45ATK. Nene blames Botan for it. And shortly after, Botan is forced to use "Magical Stick", an attack which uses all your MP and deals double your MP's damage. But the Mushroom Outbreak makes her target herself. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=1911)
• 5th Gen FFA: Polka and Botan both buy a card from Nene. Then Polka plays "Nocturnal Broom" on Nene, which removes 3 cards from the target's hand, and just like "buy", the hand size permanently gets smaller. Watch as Nene's hand size shrinks, and as Nene laments the loss of her "Diamond Sword". (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=2170)
• 5th Gen FFA: Nene despairs as she dies to Polka's 10 light damage Meteor spell. But Nene's "Ascension Bow" which she had in her hand, comes into play, which has the effect of activating as a "75% 30 Light ATK" card upon dying. (https://youtu.be/22rt5Xnte6k?t=3524) She manages to take out Botan with her death, but misses against Lamy and Polka. This card is able to turn the game into a draw.
• Polka online ranked vs Horse. Polka sells "Gold Club" to Horse, a 1ATK card that costs 25$. It's a card that basically only exists for buying/selling. Horse counters by selling it back. But Polka counters by selling it back, thanks to having an extra sell card. (https://youtu.be/UH8eQRXbpUU?t=3575 )Later in the game, Horse actually sells it back once more, but Polka has another sell ready and immediately sells it back.

Hey guys. So as we are slowly edging closer to release and the demo, in my boredom I've decided to create a simple FAQ as I find myself answering a lot of the same questions.
Some of these answers are lifted directly from PCF, some are just info I'm aware of myself. I will try to keep it updated with any questions asked in the comments.
Included are General questions, Demo info, Gameplay info, QOL info, and Crossplay/Multiplayer info.
EDIT: All updated now, if I have missed anything obvious I'll update this when I'm made aware.. thearcan feel free to do with this thread as you see fit
 

GENERAL

 

- When will Outriders be released?

01 April 2021

- What Platforms will Outriders release on?

Outriders will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC (Steam & Epic). Outriders will be released on Stadia at a later date.

- What kind of game is Outriders?

Outriders is a 1 to 3 player, drop-in-drop-out co-op, third-person-perspective shooter set in an original dark and desperate sci-fi universe.

- Where can I watch the Outriders reveal trailer?

Right here. This is also on their official channel with plenty more in depth info on the game.

- Is there an official discord?

Yes here

- Is Outriders a Free-to-Play game?

No. Outriders will only require a one-off purchase of the game.

- Is Outriders a Games-As-A-Service?

No - Outriders will be a complete experience out of the box.

- Will Outriders feature Micro-transactions?

No. However the pre order bonus will be able to be purchased separately afaik.

- Will Outriders support Smart Delivery on Xbox? Will we get a free upgrade to PlayStation 5?

Yes. Anyone who purchases the game for Xbox One or PlayStation 4, will get a free upgrade to Xbox One X, Xbox Series S and PlayStation 5 respectively.

- Will Outriders support Cross-Play?

Yes. Outriders will Fully support cross-play, meaning you will be able to explore Enoch with any of your friends on any other platform. You can play Outriders from start to finish with your friends regardless of what system they own.

- Will there be DLC?

At this time we don't know, if the game does well, hopefully we will see more of Enoch.

- Will my PC be able to handle Outriders?

See here

- Why was the game delayed?

See the official response here
 

DEMO

 

- When does the Demo release?

25th February 2021

- What will the demo include?

Final details have not been announced yet. But we know it will be the first few hours of the game.

- Will my demo progress carry over to the full game?

Yes - but there will be progress caps in place. At this moment in time we know there will be a level cap, world tier cap and story progress will be capped.

- Will the demo feature crossplay?

Yes
 

GAMEPLAY

 

- Can I play all classes?

Yes, you should have 6 character slots available.

- Will I have to replay the story for each class?

Yes, as far as we know.

- Does each class have multiple skills/powers?

Yes each class has 8 skills total. Only 3 can be equipped at one time.

- Why can we only play in groups of 3?

PCF found that groups of 3 hit the sweet spot for balancing, optimisation and visibility, especially with some much going on in battle.

- How does difficulty scaling work?

The game utilises a world tier system. There are a total of 15 World tiers. In essence the more you kill, the longer you survive, the higher the world tier you unlock. Each world tier increases difficulty, but also your rewards. This can be adjusted up (to the max you have unlocked) and down at any point.

- How does endgame work?

Endgame consists of 14 expeditions, all fresh content. In essence, get to the end as fast as you can on the highest difficulty you can for the most rewards. See more here

- What if I miss a loot drop?

There is an auto loot feature in game.

- Why don't enemies drop loot in expeditions?

They do. It all just goes to the chest at the end. See clarification here

- Does that mean if I fail an expedition I don't get any loot?

No, as per the previous linked comment, you still get this loot even if you fail.

- Can I transfer loot to another character?

Yes, there is a stash system.

- How does crating and mods work?

See Here Approx 16 mins in.

- Is there an in game achievement system?

The game will feature accolade system which is something in between achievements and battle pass. It will reward you for doing actions you would normally do in gameplay with small cosmetic rewards so if you need extra motivation to repeat few side quests and spend more time in the game here it is. The system will give only cosmetic rewards and there is no way to buy your progress, it is also completely optional but completionists can have nice fun with it.

- How do armour stats work?

See an official breakdown here

- What weapons can we use?

From what we have seen you have Pistol side arms, and equip 2 primary weapons. So far we have seen Assault rifles, LMG's, Shotguns, Sub Machine guns and a variety of rifles including Snipers.

- Can I play the whole game solo?

Yes, the number of enemies etc scale depending on how many people are in your party. Expeditions are designed for 3 players, but should still be doable solo. See clarification here

- Is there PVP?

No.
 

QUALITY OF LIFE

 

- Will there be in game comms?

No - at this time there is no in built chat or ping system. See further explanation as to why this is here

- Will there be loadouts?

No, not at this time.

- Will there be a transmog system?

No, not at this time.

- Are there colourblind settings?

Yes, I believe so.

- What are the next gen upgrades for Xbox Series X and PS5?

Nothing has been confirmed yet, but we can expect some optimisation benefits etc. Suggestions that we should know for certain by the release of the demo.

- Do I have to be online to play?

Unless something has changed recently, I believe you have to be online to play.

- Is there a mass dismantle system in game?

Yes

- Is there an item protection system in game, such as item locking?

No.

- Will players be able to mod/hack their saves etc?

Alls saves are server side, so this shouldn't be theoretically possible.
 

CROSSPLAY/MULTIPLAYER

 

- Can I turn crossplay off?

Yes

- Is there a social hub?

There are hubs in game. However they will only be accessed by yourself and those within your matchmaking party.

-How does joining a friend work?

The game operates on a host based system. You join and play in the hosts world. Host migration systems should be in place if the host dc's. You can join any friend at any point once the prologue is complete.

- How does scaling work when I join a friend?

As you are in the hosts game, you play at the level and world tier setting they are at. So you will either feel OP or under geared if you join low/high level friends retrospectively. See more here

- How does loot work in a friends game?

Loot is instance based for each player. Loot drops depending on enemy level, which is in turn based on world tier. So if you are joining friends playing on substantially lower or higher world tiers. Loot drops in essence won't be much use to you.

- How will I invite cross play friends?

They have said they will utilise a friend code system.

- Is there a cross save system?

Only between similar systems - eg Xbox one to Xbox series x, or PS4 to PS5. You will not be able to cross save between platforms, eg from Xbox to PC, or Xbox to PS.

Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/49751
This week at Bungie, we’re beginning our descent to Europa.
Every release, we have a long conversation about what we should show players leading up to launch, and what we should leave for players to discover. We want to build up the sense of wonder as a new Season or expansion makes its approach without spoiling everything that’s coming. With just a week to go before launch, we’ve almost reached our destination.
Video Link
Our Beyond Light Launch Trailer went live last week. A ViDoc, exploring Beyond Light and Season of the Hunt, is available for your viewing pleasure. We’ve released our Season of the Hunt calendar to help you plan out your days for the next few months.
Image Link^imgur
All that’s left is a quick preview of patch notes and a maintenance timeline. After that, we leave the rest to you.

It’s All in the Patch

Over the last few weeks, our goals have been to set expectations. We’ve covered the Destiny Content Vault, upcoming Sandbox changes, Gambit tuning, and more. These updates aren’t mind-blowing or overly game changing, they’re just nice little morsels to chew on in the final days leading up to launch. In any case, we hope you like the following quality of life appetizers before your meal is delivered on November 10.
Archives
Beginning November 10, two new kiosks will be available in the Tower. First up, the Quest Archive will be found next to the Postmaster. Our hope is that this removes some of the confusion when trying to track down the odd quest that you previously discarded. Additionally, this will be the place for any veteran players to pick up the New Light Quest on November 10, if they have a strong desire to experience new player tutorials and the (re-)introduction to the Cosmodrome.
Image Link^imgur
Next up, the Monument to Lost Lights Exotic Archive will be found by the Vault. Here, players may acquire various Exotics and Legendary Pinnacle/Pursuit weapons that were once available through now-retired quests. As many of these Exotics were tied to lengthy quests or difficult objectives, we wanted to make sure their prices reflected those previous efforts. Players will need an amount of Glimmer, destination materials, masterworking materials, and an Exotic Cipher or Ascendant Shard in order to purchase the Exotic or Legendary which they desire. We’re also introducing a currency, Spoils of Conquest, which can only be acquired when completing raids. This currency will be required for Exotics previously tied to Vaulted raids.
Image Link^imgur
In the past, Exotic Ciphers were very limited in nature. While you can expect one to be available as part of the Season Pass, Xur will also offer a quest to earn one Exotic Cipher on a weekly cadence.
Now, let's move on to some traditional patch notes...
Crucible

• Trials of Osiris
  
  • Trials of Osiris Power level requirement increased to 1210.
  • Added ADEPT weapons and weapon mods to Flawless chest rewards.
  • Additional information here (link TWAB).
• Maps
  
  • Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Altar of Flame.
  • Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Exodus Blue.
  • Added physics blockers to some out-of-bounds areas on Cauldron.

Player Identity

• Login screens now have a dark background.
• Updated the full-screen menus to have a dark background style.
• Player waypoints now display Season Rank, HUD waypoints.
• Added toggle functionality to the character screen, allowing the player to make a choice between Light and Dark subclasses.
  
  • Character screen visuals updated depending on player choice between Light and Dark.

Character Creation

• Changed selection from "Male" & "Female" to "Masculine" & "Feminine."
• Guardian head and hair models have been replaced with improved versions.
  
  • Several color swatches have been changed to better represent the applied color.
  • Player’s previous head selections are still used.

Misc

• Fixed a bug that prevented online friends from showing up in the roster on Stadia for players with more than 100 friends.
• Fixed a bug that occasionally prevented players from earning progress on bounties when joining an activity in progress.
• This most notably impacted Iron Banner bounties and could cause players to have their Artifact Power bonus enabled during Iron Banner matches.

A few Sandbox changes that we missed in our Sandbox preview

• Traveler's Chosen
  
  • Reduced muzzle flash intensity.
• Point of the Stag
  
  • Increased Point of the Stag's Max Power Level to 1310.
• Divinity
  
  • Fixed a bug that prevented some weapons from dealing precision damage to the Divinity cage (e.g. Eriana's Vow).
• Hunter Dodge
  
  • Increased Hunter's Dodge cooldown by a few seconds.
  • (E.g. Tier 4, old cooldown: 22 sec. New cooldown: 26 sec.)
• Anti-Champion Mods
  
  • Anti-barrier rounds will now penetrate Taken Phalanx shields.
  • All Anti-Champion mods have been shifted to armor, rather than taking a weapon mod slot.
• Orbs of Light have been changed to Orbs of Power as they can now be consumed by Light and Dark subclasses.
  

Before we end our patch note preview, we do want to call out the collectors among you who have been talking about the impending removal of Expired Ramen Coupons from your inventories. We know this one stings a bit. It’s a byproduct of us cleaning up inventory systems and doing general maintenance.
We want to a provide a parting gift before these coupons are tossed into the bin. These coupons can’t be redeemed for spicy ramen, but they can decorate your desktop for as long as you desire.
[4k – SPICY RAMEN COUPONS]
Image Link^imgur
…and there we have it. Full patch notes will be released on Tuesday around launch time. Stay tuned!

Novembrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

With a new expansion coming next week, we also have a fresh update coming to Bungie Store! We’re entering the holiday season, so it’s a pretty good time to start gift shopping for your favorite Guardians out there in the world.
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Starting November 9, upgrade your arsenal of collectibles and gifts at Bungie Store with new exclusive products and free in-game emblems with purchase, including the Destiny 2: Beyond Light Original Soundtrack!
Cosmic Alignment (Available November 9 through December 4, 2020)
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Between Stars (Available November 9 through February 9, 2021)
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Shattered Harmony (Available November 9 with purchase of Destiny 2: Beyond Light Original Soundtrack)
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Follow @BungieStore on Twitter for more deals and discounts to be announced every Friday in Novembrrrr from The Drifter, The Exo Stranger and Variks.

Let’s Talk Maintenance and Pre-Loads

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Next Monday, November 9, Destiny 2 will go offline for an extended maintenance period. We want to give everyone ample time to download Destiny 2 Update 3.0.0. Our teams are prepping for the launch day assault on our servers. Destiny Player Support has the full timeline for maintenance, downloads, and more. Read up, spread the word, and get ready for Beyond Light.
This is their report.

UPDATE 3.0.0.1
Next Monday, maintenance for Update 3.0.0.1 will begin. Below is a timeline of events:

• November 9, 3:30 PM PST (2330 UTC): Background maintenance for Update 3.0.0.1 will begin.
• November 9, 4:00 PM PST (0000 UTC): In preparation for downtime, players will be removed from activities and will be required to download a small update before logging in again.
• November 9, 6:50 PM PST (0250 UTC): Sign-on for Destiny 2 will be disabled.
• November 9, 7:00 PM PST (0300 UTC): Destiny 2 will be brought offline for expected maintenance. Players will be removed from activities and won't be able to log back into Destiny 2 until 9 AM PST on November 10.
• November 10, 9:00 AM PST (1700 UTC): Destiny 2 Update 3.0.0.1 will be available across all platforms and regions. Players will be able to log back into Destiny 2.
• November 10 12:00 PM PDT (2000 UTC): Destiny 2 maintenance is expected to conclude.

For more information, please visit our Destiny Server and Update Status help article.
BEYOND LIGHT PRE-LOAD
Pre-load for Update 3.0.0.1 will be available prior to the game’s release. Below are pre-load timelines and instructions based on platform:
PlayStation
Beginning on November 8 after 8 PM PST (0400 UTC), users can start pre-downloading Update 3.0.0.1 by:

• Navigating to Destiny 2
• Pressing the “Options” button
• And selecting “Check for Updates”

In an effort to decrease server load, some PlayStation Plus users may be able to pre-download Update 3.0.0.1 starting on November 7 after 8 PM PST (0400 UTC) if they have auto update/download enabled on their PlayStation 4. For instructions on how to setup auto update/download, please click here.
PLEASE NOTE: BUNGIE RECOMMENDS THAT PLAYERS SHOULD NOT DELETE THEIR CURRENT VERSION OF DESTINY 2 ON THEIR PLAYSTATION CONSOLE TO SPEED UP THE PRE-DOWNLOAD PROCESS.
Xbox
Pre-load for Xbox will be available shortly after Destiny 2 is taken offline for expected maintenance at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) on November 9. For instructions on how to setup auto update, please click here.
PC
Pre-load for PC will be available shortly after Destiny 2 is taken offline for expected maintenance at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) on November 9. Update 3.0.0.1 should automatically be put in the Steam download queue once it is available to pre-load. For more information on managing Steam downloads and updates, please click here.
STORAGE REQUIREMENTS
Below are the updated storage requirements for Beyond Light:
Platform |Destiny 2 Install Size |Storage Space Needed for Installation | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| Xbox Series X|S|65.7 GB|65.7GB| PlayStation 5|70.78 GB|70.78 GB| PlayStation 4|70.78 GB|171.68 GB| Xbox One|65.7 GB|65.7 GB| PC|69.7 GB |186.2 GB** |
** PlayStation 4: Includes current installed version of Destiny 2 (100.9 GB) + Update 3.0.0.1 pre-load (70.78 GB) = 171.68 GB*
*** PC: Destiny 2 Install Size may vary based on languages installed, size shown is maximum size possible *
** PC: Includes current installed version of Destiny 2 (up to 116.5 GB) + Update 3.0.0.1 pre-load (up to 69.7 GB) = 186.2 GB*
DESTINY CONTENT VAULT AND THE END OF SEASON OF ARRIVALS
With the start of Year 4 and the introduction of the Destiny Content Vault on November 10, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with Vaulted destinations, activities, and campaigns.
Players should review our help articles on items being deprecated at the start of Year 4 and items being removed at the end of Season of Arrivals for more information on items, quests, and currencies that will be removed from player inventories at the start of Year 4. Some items listed can be used or turned in for rewards, such as Glimmer, weapons, and armor, so be sure to do that before November 10.
Additionally, certain Titles will become Legacy Seals and unavailable to earn at the start of Year 4. Players should be sure to equip the following Titles before November 9 at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC), after which they will be unavailable to earn. For more information, please visit our Year 4 Triumphs Update help article.
Seal |Title | |--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--|--| A Shadow Rises|Shadow| Reckoner|Reckoner| Black Armory|Blacksmith| Destinations|Wayfarer| Lore|Chronicler| Undying|Undying| Dawn|Savior| Almighty|Almighty| Arrivals|Forerunner| Moments of Triumph 2020|MMXX|
BUNGIE REWARDS
With the release of Beyond Light on November 10, certain Bungie Rewards will no longer be available to earn. These include the ‘Eclipse Sunset’ and ‘Sunset’ emblems, the Year of Shadowkeep Artifact Coins, the Moments of Triumph t-shirt, the Raid Ring, the Prophecy Dungeon Hoodie, the MMXX Seal, and the Forerunner Seal.
Players should be sure to earn these rewards by November 9 at 7 PM PST (0300 UTC) and claim these rewards from the Bungie Rewards page before November 13 at 8 AM PST (1600 UTC).

Encore

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Before we kick off a new year of Destiny content, we have a final round for Movie of the Week. 2020 isn’t over yet, but we’ve had a blast watching community-created content throughout Shadowkeep and its associated Seasons. Many thanks to those who’ve submitted their footage (and art!), as it’s kept us sane week over week.
Here are your final Movie of the Week selections before Beyond Light brings some Darkness to the table.
Movie of the Week: Thanks, Taken!
Video Link
Movie of the Week: Festival of the Lost, Parting Shot
Video Link
Movie of the Week: Give ‘em a hand
Video Link
Movie of the Week: SEVENTH COLUMN!!! ...AND ANOTHER ONE!
Video Link
Movie of the Week: It isn’t over until it’s over

OMG can someone explain this please?!?! Like wtf just happened🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️ @A_dmg04 @Gladd @BungieHelp @Xbox pic.twitter.com/aYNfaeG7WM
— TG DuAc (@TGDuAc1) November 2, 2020

Next week, we’ll have a new companion section for Movie of the Week. We felt it important to give the same spotlight to the artists of our community as we’ve been giving to those who create fun videos.
To throw your hat in the ring, submit your content to the Community Creations portal on Bungie.net. If you also post your content to social media, tag it with #DestinyMOTW or #DestinyArt. We’ll snag a few winners each week and grant them some fancy new emblems.
We’ve been here a few times. What was once months became weeks. Weeks have become mere days. Five more sleeps stand between you and Beyond Light. Well, that’s if you can even sleep the night before launch. I know I probably won’t. Many of you have been on this journey with us from the start. In the last year, numerous Guardians have begun their journey through New Light. No matter how long you’ve been a Guardian, we can’t thank you enough for playing.
Stay hydrated. Be healthy. Treat yourself well.
We’re almost there.
See you starside.
-dmg04

There are lot of new to mining folks here, I’m one of them. Here is my journey and some of the lessons I learned

Why did I go here?

When Bitcoin hit $40k I finally decided that cryptocurrency isn’t going to go away. And if it’s not going to go away I should look into it. The sad thing is that in the early early days of bitcoin I had played with getting a miner going. I even got to the point where it was happily mining away on my computer. But then I had to get back to work and when my computer rebooted I never started it up again. What a loss!
I should also call out, the EtherMining guide is really good. If you are starting your mining journey it’s very helpful

The Wallet

I made the investment in a Ledger wallet. I’ve seen the reddit post that made it to all about poor souls that lost huge amount because of some hack or thievery. If I’m going crypto I’m controlling the keys. I did some research and determined that Leger or Trezor are the best cold wallets. After which I read on Ledger’s site that you shouldn’t mine directly to ledger because it can’t handle a large amount of small transitions (more on this later). Did some google and went with Mew for my mining software wallet figuring I’ll transfer to ledger after.
Here I learned about the magic 20 words or a Mnemonic phrase. Unlike banks, Ledger and Mew don’t hold your account. They are simply devices. If Mew is installed on your phone and if you lose your phone you’re screwed and you can lose all your holdings. Unless you can rebuild your wallet with the Mnemonic phrase that is. Alright, good stuff. I have mine and a safe wallet

And Ethereum?

Of course first I looked into mining bitcoin again. What? You need an ASIC miner these days? Holy shit they cost how much? Alright, who’s number 2. When you start researching about Ethereum it’s pretty freaking cool. This thing could overtake Bitcoin someday and you can mine it with a GPU. Hey I have one of those!

The card

I have a 2070 super which I got shortly after they were released for under $500. I’ve been using it for video games and it’s great. Who knew there would be a run on GPUs and the cards worth more than I paid for it!

The Pool

I quickly learn that solo mining is a fool’s game with Ethereum, you need a pool. I went with Sparkpool simply because it was the largest. As the new guy I don’t need to be trying out the newest pool, I want stability. I also wanted to stay anonymous, turns out all you need is a deposit address. Nice

The miner

Fees to use a miner? The heck? I’m not afraid of a CLI, let’s go with the free one. I download the latest Ethminer. Now we hit the first real challenge as the example configurations were all over the place. After some trial and error I settle on a .bat that does;
ethminer.exe -P stratum1+tcp://

[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]):3333

We’re mining!

On Sparkpool you can search by your wallet address. After ~10min, there I am. Cool! I’m mining! Change the sleep settings on Windows and I’m mining while I sleep. Now when can I get my earnings? Let’s see they pay out at 0.1 ETH….. Let’s do some math…. Yeah that’s not happening for a long time. Ahh, they pay out on the 28th of the month even if you don’t make 0.1. Just got to wait. And this is where I was for a few weeks

On to Upgrading

I’m mining, what a fun start. I’m not in a position to put together a rig though. Maybe there’s some reasonable changes I can make

The Miner

Let’s start easy, the miner. I see post on EtherMining that Phoenixminer is just the best (I’ve since read the same thing for about 3 different miners). Ok, I don’t like the idea of a fee but I have stats at Sparkpool, let’s see what it does to the average. Around this time I found the guide on EtherMining and learned about adding commands to my .bat file for etherminer or phoenixminer as well. My .bats now start with
setx GPU_FORCE_64BIT_PTR 0
setx GPU_MAX_HEAP_SIZE 100
setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
setx GPU_SINGLE_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
Turns out I do get a bit better results with Phoeixminer. Nothing amazing but it is better. And the reporting in the CMD prompt is better. I can see information on my card and hashrate. Cool!
I also finally take the time to find my electricity bill to see what I’m paying. My cost per kWh is 0.09, lucky me! Plug that into mining calculators online, I’m ok. At least I’m not losing money.

How about a 3070?

Alright, this is fun and all, but what if we can could do more. My computer has some more PCIe slots. How much could I make with a Nvidia 3xxx? Turns out betterhash let’s you know. You can plug in any card there and get a hash estimate. Turns out I could make over $100 month with a 3070. At $600 the card would pay for itself in 6 months!
….There are no freaking cards for sale. Anywhere. What the heck. How late am I too this game? And the ones that are available, they want $980 for a 3070? I look deep. I make the half hour trip to Micro Center and get told to try coming in at 8am every day and I might get lucky. Not looking good.
Finally I recall I used to order stuff from CDW at my old IT job. I hit pay dirt! They have a 3070! It’s expensive but it’s not $900. Card ordered! (Since then, they’ve been out of stock. I got lucky)

Upgrade issue #1

I need to make room for the 3070. My 2070 Super is a 3 fan and it’s long. There’s not room in the 2nd PCIe slot in my case for the long card. I end up moving everything around and break off some plastic from the hardrive cage, I got it in!
I have a 3rd PCIE, can I put a card there? Not unless it’s super thin, the power supply is right under it. Looks like I’m limited to 2 cards for now.

Upgrade issues #2

My new 3070 is extra wide (PHY uprising edition if you care). The fans literally sit on the 2070. And with both cards in there my computer is hot! My computer feels like a heater right now. Let’s google on how to deal with heat. I learn about and download MSI Afterburner. Pretty cool tool! Not only can you see the temperature you can adjust a lot of settings on your GPU. I spin up my miner and start MSI afterburner. Ok, the 2070 is doing fine, let’s see how the 3070 is doing.. 90 degrees, ok, ok. Wait it’s Celsius, holy crap! What the heck! That’s 194 degrees F! It’s gotta be that wide ass 3070 making the fans sit on the 2nd card. The cooling air it’s sucking up is coming straight from the 2070…
I switch the cards (why did I break my hardrive cage?). Now the 2070 is back in the first slot which is not ideal, I liked the idea of using the 3070 for video games.. Spin up my miner, we are doing better. Both cards are in the mid 70s Celsius. That’s fine right? Do some googling… Crap, no it’s still too hot…
Time to upgrade the fans in the computer. Another half hour trip to Micro Center, I get a 140 and 120 size fan. I also get a fan controller because I noted that I only had 1 free fan plug in on my motherboard. The fan controller ends up fitting perfectly in a hardrive slot, like it was made for it. Fortunately I overbought my PSU and I have plenty of power slots for adding one offs like a fan controller.
Alright, I’ve filled every Fan spot on my case, there are 5 fans going…. And there blowing wrong…. After redoing everything because I messed up the fan directions…. (Remember kids, air should flow front to back and heat rises) Let’s try again!
Spin up the miners…. I’m under 70 degrees Celsius! Progress, progress. But high 60’s is still in the danger zone. Here is where I find some nice post in EtherMining on MSI afterburner settings. Raising my fan speed to almost 80, cutting my power to somewhere in the 70s, raising the memory clock to +500. Now I’m at 63 c! And my hash rate went up as a bonus!

Here I am and where I’m going

If you’ve made it this far, it’s been a learning journey for me. There are some things I can still do better at but I think I have the basics of Ethermining down. I’m happy with where I’ve gotten. I’ve also learned a ton about crypto currency.
Going forward, I might change from Sparkpool but I’m still on the fence. From EtherMining I know everyone and their mother is going to Flexpool. But I’m a small player (~100 MH/s) and waiting for 0.2 ETH for payout would take a long time which is risk. And I’m not sure what the PPLNs type plan would net me.
I’m also considering using the address for my ledger for my proceeds. It’s going to go there anyway and I would like to avoid fees from moving my coin around. I know ledger cautions about large amounts of small transactions but with a pool the payout is only once a month so I don’t think it applies. If the ledger can’t handle 12 deposits a year then I need to find something else anyway.
You know, I might have gone big but with staking being the future of Ethereum, the rising difficulty level of mining, not really having a place to put a rig or honestly the funds for one, I think I’m going to stay a small player and just see if I can eventually pay back this 3070 I bought. In the end it’s been a ton of fun and added excitement to the monotony of being quarantined to a house all day. Thank you for the forum post and the new hobby!
Were you entertained? You can always send things to 0xAD0cd237BDE28AF4Dc4E0D913285e74217384e29 (worth a shot)

Hi everyone, I’m RamKev or KevinRamen, NA Challenger. You might know me from my Dusk Vayne guide for Set 4 or from the latest GSTV Challenger Series tourney this week where I pulled off a win with Talon. With the mid-set update coming up, I wanted to write a general guide for what I believe is one of the stronger strategies during the early part of the set – rerolling for 3* 1-cost carries (it’s also my favorite way to play the game). I want to go over the general cadence of rerolling, including important decisions like when to roll and when to level, and share a list of units that I believe are carry-worthy for the new set.
 
This is my Lolchess for reference: https://lolchess.gg/profile/na/ramkev
 
Before I get into any of the specific details, I want to go over my general philosophy behind the cost-benefit tradeoffs of rerolling for 3* 1-cost carries.
I believe that one of the main draws for 1-cost reroll comps is their early and somewhat irregular spiking point compared to comps that rely on more standard carries. From my experience, you will for the most part be spiking hard at some point during round 3 when you hit one or several 3* units. For comps that rely on higher cost carries, standard roll-down points are around 4-1 or 4-5, which means that in a typical lobby, you can very likely streak up until round 4 carousel. Assuming you hit, this basically grants you an enormous injection of gold in the mid-game from streaking and being able to greed levels as a result of board strength. This strength is exacerbated even more during the early set, where most people are still not familiar with traits or units and are playing weaker boards during the mid-game as a result.
 
Rerolling for one-cost carries is also a great way to abuse the chosen mechanic in set 4. If you are playing around a 1-cost carry, it should always be a chosen unit, because not only will it get the chosen stat bonus, but essentially being given 3 copies of the same unit all at once makes the path to 3-staring that unit so much faster. It also makes the decision of when to sell and reroll for chosen a lot easier because you’ll be playing the same chosen throughout the entire game.
 
Unfortunately, you are taking on some risks by choosing to reroll for a 1-cost carry. The biggest one is sacrificing in-game flexibility. If you decide to commit, then if you don’t hit, you’re basically screwed. There are no backup plans. A 2* 1 cost carry will be nowhere near enough to carry you through the mid game, and if you end up having to spend all of your gold trying to hit a 3*, then it will take a while before you can start levelling back up, giving the rest of the lobby a chance to out-scale. If you get unlucky, it is very easy to go 8th, whereas playing flexibly which gives you several backup plans. In addition, it is very easy to lose health while rerolling – You will most likely be lower level than the rest of the lobby and can potentially lose early fights by several units. That is why it is crucial to play the strongest board you can while still maintaining decent econ. If you end up losing too much health, then even if your board strength is good, one bad fight can knock you out. Finally, and this applies to some comps more so than others, you are susceptible to being out-scaled in the late-late game. Many one-costs are lacking in large-scale AOE that the later game units can provide (Samira COUGH COUGH). This either means you should look towards replacing some of the current units you are using with more useful legendaries or you should look towards levelling to 9 and replacing your chosen with a legendary chosen.
 
IMPORTANT DECISIONS – ROLLING, LEVELLING:
Rounds 1 and 2:
The first and most important decision you’ll have to make is whether or not you actually want to commit to a reroll comp. This decision should almost always be made before Round 2 Carousel (and preferably before 2-1) and depends on several factors: Chosen unit, number of units, and items. There are no set-in-stone rules here (I believe that decisions in TFT should never be static), but I have a couple good rules-of-thumb that I use to give myself the go-ahead, ordered in terms of how strong they should signal you to go down the reroll route (3 and 4 are pretty iffy and can be high-risk since your odds of hitting are lower):

1. If you have 6 or more of your chosen unit by carousel
   
2. If you have 5 of your carry unit by carousel, including chosen, with one good component
   
3. If you have 4 of your carry unit by carousel and can make a core completed item for them
   
4. If you have a chosen unit with good items, and are uncontested
   

Again, you should not take these as strict guidelines. Sometimes it’s better to level, push an early win-streak and transition in the mid-game. Sometimes you might want to test your luck just for fun. These are just some good heuristics that I personally have found success with in set 4 and on PBE.
 
Rolling/Levelling:
NEVER ROLL BEFORE KRUGS!!! This isn’t just advice for rerolling, this is just general advice. No matter how you’re playing the game, you should NOT be rolling before 2-7 unless you somehow have 7 pairs or something ridiculous like that.
For Round 2, I usually don’t put any money into levelling, since this decreases your chances of naturalling 1-cost units. However, there are exceptions. If you happened to have pre-levelled during 1-3 and find a 1-cost chosen that you already had a 2* for, then you can still consider rerolling for that unit. Likewise, if you already have 7 copies of a unit and think you can push streak by playing an additional unit then you can level to 4 during 2-1/to 5 during 2-5 while still rerolling for that unit during Round 3.
 
General Eco guidelines:
Nothing set-in-stone here, but if you are still level 4 by the end of Round 2, you should be around 40 gold and pushing 50 by the start of round 3.
 
Round 3: If you have committed to rerolling, then this is the round where you have to make many micro-decisions that will ultimately determine how successful you’ll be in the lobby.
 
3-1 Roll-down:
In most reroll scenarios, you’ll be level 4 at 3-1. At this point in the game, you should be asking yourself if you want to roll some gold here and at what point you want to stop. You can donkey-roll all of your gold in hopes of hitting a 3. There are a couple benefits to this – you’ll hard spike incredibly early, and your chances of hitting are probably highest at this point in the game. I usually do not try to do this unless I have 7+ copies of the unit, because if you don’t hit, it is very hard to econ back up. Instead, I’ll roll a bit of gold to stabilize my board (usually staying above 30 gold). This means upgrading the rest of your units while also looking for your 1 cost carry. I tend to do this quite a bit, since it will preserve health in the long run, and you’ll be able to get closer to your 3 unit. Finally, you can choose to not roll at all. Feel free to do this if you think your board is strong enough and you have enough of the unit you want where you’ll be able to hit it easily without having to lose econ (6 or more).
 
3-2 through 3-6:
Rolling:
During these rounds, you want to econ back up and slow-roll for your 3*. When doing this, I want to emphasize a very important point that I believe many people in all ELOs have trouble understanding:
Health is the most important currency in the game.
People tend to forget this fact, ESPECIALLY when they are slow-rolling, even though I would say that it is even more important to keep this point in mind when you’re slow-rolling. What this means is that you should not be tunnel-visioning to stay at 50 gold. If you’re losing rounds by 5 units every time, you should be rolling a bit already until you have better frontline. If you’re 1 unit away from 3*, you should be rolling aggressively to hit. Don’t come crying back to me when you lose the game because you lost 80 health by the end of Round 3 while sitting on 50 gold for the entire game. Learn your in-game tradeoffs and adjust your value system accordingly.
 
Levelling:
You’ll be level 5 until your 3*. Once you hit, then you can think about levelling to 6 and ultimately 7. You should ALWAYS be keeping win-streak in mind when you do so. Are you strong enough to greed levelling until later? Does levelling make your board significantly stronger at the cost of 1 or 2 gold in interest? These are the types of questions you should be asking yourself.
 
Round 4 and Late Game:
At this point, most of the important decisions should be out of the way. Play the game as you usually do, focus on levelling to 8/9, positioning and looking for upgraded units/synergies. This should all be standard stuff. If you fall off early, you might have to roll at 8 for upgrades/replacement units. If you’re streaking, you can push 9 and look for legendaries. If you fall off in the late-late game, you can consider selling off your 1-cost chosen for a 5-cost chosen if you have the gold. This type of knowledge should be universal, regardless of what comp you’re playing, reroll or not.
 
Comps:
Carry Worthy: (first synergy listed is better IMO)
 
SyphoneDivine Nasus: A very strong carry unit throughout all points in the game. Ideally you get a JG + Titans on him, so he’ll be dealing tons of damage while becoming unkillable. I’ve seen a lot of people making the mistake of putting Gunblade on this unit. He does not need additional healing, he already gets that from the Syphoner trait. It is far better if he is itemized for DPS and tankiness.
 
Yasuo: Very standard comp that basically carries over from Set 4. Looking for items like QSS, Titans, IE, Last Whisper, etc. The only difference is that Xin has been replaced with Tryndamere, meaning it will be a bit difficult to get 6 Duelists online in the early game. You’ll probably have to make due with other enlightened/divine/syphoner units and synergies until you find that last duelist that you need. Hard spikes with Yone + Lee in the late game.
 
Mage Brand: This is basically the new Nami. You want a Ludens on him for sure since he benefits a lot from the CC-boosted damage. Then you’ll probably want some mana or defensive items to fill out the rest of his slots.
 
Divine/Vanguard Wukong: Good ol’ Bonkey Kong. He benefits a lot from AD/AS items. In Set 4, I would avoid playing the Vanguard chosen version of this unit, but with the changes to Vanguard, I can see him doing very well with lifesteal + Rageblade.
 
Dragonsoul/Sharpshooter Tristana: I have tried several times to make this unit work since she’s basically the Vayne replacement for 4.5. I think Shiv is probably the best item for her, since she gets an attack speed steroid as her ult, so she’ll be cranking out the autos and dealing tons of AOE damage.
 
Spirit/Assassin Diana: Haven’t had the fortune to play reroll Diana in any PBE games, but from what I have seen, she is very capable of popping off. Itemizes similarly to Moonlight Diana.
 
Untested: Duelist/Enlightened Fiora: This is a chosen I abused a couple of times on PBE. If you get a JG and a mana item on her, she is an absolute smurf, dodging damage and CC while dishing out tons of damage. However, she’s being changed on live so that her chosen stat is HP instead of Mana, so I don’t think she will be as good. Important to keep in mind that her damage comes from her ult, not her autos, so you want to itemize for AP and mana, not AD. She falls off hard in the late game, so you’ll probably want to transition to a chosen legendary.
 
Mage TF: I’m still not too clear on how good this is in the new set, but with the decreased Mage synergy thresholds, this could be viable. However, TF is a unit that has very inconsistent damage and targeting, so I tend to avoid him as a late game carry.
 
Cultists: You can potentially reroll cultists and play for 9 cultists in the late game with Sivir buffing your Galio. Haven’t really tried this, so I’m not too sure how strong it is.
 
Garbo Tier:
Sharp/Warlord Nidalee: This unit as a main carry is trash. The fact that her spears can miss completely means that her damage is way too inconsistent.
 
Conclusion:
Hopefully this guide helps everyone out! I know I didn’t really go into details about the specific comps, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
I’m also gonna plug myself on Twitch, I do free coaching and try to stream most of my games:
https://www.twitch.tv/kevinramen

I had an idea for a rogue who essentially was raised by a church's priest and was eventually welcomed into a secret sect of the church focused on getting back assets stolen from them, anything from artifacts to kidnapped church members. Without going too much into backstory he was essentially a person's retrieval expert. Get in unseen, get the target unseen, get out unseen.
​
Initially I was going to make him a thief with the Healer feat but I was looking into some of the newest Tasha's options and thought that the Twilight Cleric would fix a lot of the minor problems with my concept. So, here's the build
Race: Variant Human, "Healer" feat
Background: Acolyte, Insight is great and Religion doesn't hurt, plus it gives me a Holy Symbol so I don't have to go and get one once I get Cleric levels

Stats (Point Buy):

Strength - 8 (unneeded)
Dexterity - 15 (+1 from race)
Constitution - 13
Intelligence - 8 (unneeded)
Wisdom - 15 (+1 from race)
Charisma - 12 (could dump this to 10 for 14 con, but I'd like a little charisma for unwilling captives)

Current Build Idea (Rogue 18/Cleric 2)

Start off rogue, take expertise in Medicine and Stealth. Grabbing a shortbow as the primary weapon since I'll mostly be hanging in the back as supporting fire and heals. Grab a Rapier too for situations that call for it. Immediately go Cleric 2. First level gets us a ton of goodies

• Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, and Shields (meh. Won't be wielding a shield often, not strong enough for heavy armor, although if I got a breastplate before my first ASI that will be 1 more AC)
• Martial Weapons (Can upgrade to a longbow for 1 more damage)
• 300 foot Darkvision that can be shared with others (amazing. Counteracts the lack of darkvision from being a human and we can give it to our allies since we're more of a support build and don't work perfectly by ourselves, as well as to people we save)
• Can give one person including ourselves advantage on initiative rolls. (Nothing outstanding but it'll always be something nice to have)
• Three Cantrips (Guidance is top tier, Thaumaturgy gives a lot of fun utility, last one to grab is probably mending since we don't need anything else)
• Six 1st level spells (Domain grants us Sleep which is great for sneaking and Faerie Fire is a free way to get Sneak Attack, and for general spells we can pick up Bless, Shield of Faith, Healing Word (until we get thief subclass), and Cure Wounds)

For just one more level we get an extra spell and spell slot as well as the Channel Divinity which makes everyone stealthier and just a little more tanky. Removing Charmed/Feared is great thematically as well. After that we just go straight rogue, getting to use healing kits as a bonus action once we get thief basically gives us 10 buffed up Healing Words so even without spell slots we can still heal without giving up our action to cast a spell or attack.

Some Other Ideas

So that was the idea that made most sense to me. Pretty much every feature I want is online by level five and the only real sacrifices I make are being 2 levels behind on ASI's and always being 1d6 of sneak attack behind a pure rogue, but I'm getting an absolute ton of utility and a better weapon out of the deal.
There were two other builds I considered the first of which rogue 19/cleric 1 so that I'm only one level behind some of the bigger features and I don't really lose much other than the Channel Divinity. The second was Rogue 17/ Cleric 3, taking a straight four levels of rogue first to get my subclass and +2 to my Dex. The extra Cleric level gets me some nice spells like Enhance Ability and Warding Bond but for half of my level ups I'll be 2d6 behind Sneak Attack and be way behind on ASIs so I feel like it's just not worth it.
Anyways though that's my thoughts on the build! I'd really appreciate some feedback on how many levels of cleric I should take or if there's even a better subclass or build that gets this theme across better. Also a bit confused on which ASIs. Since most of the spells I grab won't be reliant on my casting stat I feel like I can leave my Wisdom at 16 and just go straight for +2 dex two times to eventually get +20 but I'm not completely sure if that's the best or if there's any feats that beat out the stat increase. Thanks in advance everyone!

Thanks for all the positive feedback and corrections - I made some edits.
Hi everyone! I thought I'd write down some things about BB (Boom Beach) that I wish I had known or realized early on. I don't think I am a BB expert or even a very good player, and in fact I have only been playing for a bit over a year. But I have been following the BB subreddit for a while now, and there seem to be a lot of people that don't know the most basic principles of the game, so maybe this post can be helpful. Some of these things I realized myself over time, but mostly I learned about them from other players in guides, posts or videos. The following is just my selection of beginner's tips. I am not going to say everything that there is to say about each point; look it up, if you want more details. I just think the following is essential BB information you should know about, whether or not you follow the advice.
First of all, I am going to assume, that everyone wants to play the game in such a way as to progress fast and potentially go far (on the leaderboard, on the Crab, or with a TF). That assumption might not be correct, and BB lets you play any way you like. If maxing everything before upgrading your HQ works for you, or if you enjoy having 5 green MPs, then that's ok; but don't complain that the game is broken or that you don't progress as fast as you'd like.
FOCUS ON OFFENSE
This is the best advice anyone can give you, and the most frequent advice appearing in the comments here. Offense is overpowered in BB. You can completely ignore upgrading or even just building your own defenses for a long time, and at any time, you should focus on your offense. When you prioritize offense, beating bases many levels above you is no problem and getting resources is easy. This concept can be hard to embrace when you are new to BB and it might seem wrong to totally neglect your defense, but that's the way it works. Your defenses will never, ever be strong enough to keep you from getting raided.
DON'T TRY TO SAVE RESOURCES
It doesn't work. This is a big beginner's mistake. You will just get raided and lose a large part, especially with a low level Vault. Instead, it works much better to get all the resources you need for your next upgrade all at once.
DON'T RELY ON RESOURCE PRODUCTION - GO RAIDING
Your production buildings and resource bases are a small factor when it comes to getting resources. It's best to get what you need by attacking.
GET WHAT YOU NEED, START AN UPGRADE, STOP
Again, you cannot save resources effectively. Go raiding, start your next upgrade, then don't attack anymore. This way you don't have to mind getting raided yourself, since you won't have much to lose. And you will always get raided.
GAINING AND LOSING RESOURCES
The amount that an attacker gains is not the same as the one that the defender loses. How much you can gain from a player base is determined the moment you first scout it, with various subtractions and additions being performed by the game. From that moment on the amount will never change. When you get attacked you always lose a certain percentage of your resources (depending on your Vault level), but your attacker might gain more or less than that. The game creates or destroys resources as needed.
THE TRIBE RESOURCE BOAT
This is actually a way to save resources, although you can't see how much exactly there is on it. The recources on this boat just accummulate indefinately, without a limit. You gain Gold from freed villages and Wood, Stone and Iron from resource bases. You can actually lose some of the resources on the boat when one of your resource bases gets taken, but the boat is still a great way to save resources, so try to not use it every day, but rather save up for later. When you get it is up to you, find out what works for you.
CURATE YOUR MAP
You can "save" resources for your next upgrade on the map, in the form of player bases that you keep around for attacking. I suggest you just scout bases as soon as they appear, rather than waiting for Fridays or the next Crab, when they might have the highest amounts - they might, but it varies anyway. When you scout a base, have a look at the possible rewards, and put a note/symbol/emoji in the comment field. Find a system that works for you. My suggestion: use a red emoji for a base that you don't want to attack - either because it would yield a small reward or because you think it might be too tough for you at this point. That's the most important part, because you can then exchange the base for another one after 24 h. Use other symbols, if you want, like a symbol for bases with an especially big reward, or a symbol for a base that you can beat very easily without boosting statues. Just get rid of the bases that don't work for you - until you reach a point where you might want to push you VPs (Victory Points) by attacking everyone you can.
HOW YOU GAIN AND LOSE VPs
You gain VPs from successfully attacking bases. The Cycle of Evil will never give you any VPs, player bases always give you 2, NPC bases give you 1 (and sometimes two, see below). You lose one VP when a new NPC or player base appears on your map, and when your home base gets raided. Don't feel bad about either of these events. It's an unavoidable part of the game. You will always get raided and you will never be able to clear your map and just have it keep that way - the game will always give you new targets to attack (and make your base appear on other players' map, unless you stop logging in for a few days). Invasions are just BB's way of matching you with opponents. Over time you can accumulate more VPs, because of the player bases you destroy. You get 2 VPs for that but only lose one when a new base appears, and in the end you can also gain more VPs that way than what you lose by being raided yourself. You also gain VPs from the Diamond Chests that are already there immediately after exploring a new map region, but not from the Diamond Chests that randomly appear throughout the day.
MANAGE YOU VPs
On lower levels HQ level factors into the matchmaking, but mainly it is based solely on VPs, regardless of other factors, like EXP level, or a players "strength". You will get matched against bases many levels above you. If you focus on offense, that is not really a problem. Just be careful not to rise too high too soon, or you will mostly face very tough or even unbeatable opponents - you will "hit the wall". If you follow the previous advice about stopping to attack when you have the resources you need, then this won't happen to you. Getting rid of VPs is difficult; you can put your HQ on the beach to make yourself an easy target, but without a lot of resources you will be an unattractive target and it will be a slow process. Better to avoid reaching that point. Here's what you do, while you are still at a lower level: You attack the Cycle of Evil events (especially Dr. T and Immitation Game) and NPC bases, and then just as many player bases as you need. You do get more rewards when you move up in the VP range and rank, though: You will get slightly more from the rewards boats and the Supply Chest, and more importantly, the player bases will yield higher rewards. Just move up when you choose, and don't rush it early on. Early on you can use this rule of thumb: multiply your EXP level by 10 - this would be a fine VP range for you. But when you focus on offense, you can also go higher than that.
NPC BASES ARE VP NEUTRAL - KIND OF
These bases will mostly give you one VP when you destroy them, and since you also lose one when they appear, there is no change in the end. I said mostly, because sometimes they will give you 2 VPs. However, this second VP comes out of a pool of only 200 extra VPs, and once you have received the extra VP 200 times, NPC bases will always award you only one VP. You actually have a higher chance of getting a second VP when there are more still left in the pool. I still think you are better off attacking them before attacking player bases at a low level, even though initially you might gain more VPs in relation to the resources you gain.
PLAN YOUR UPGRADES
You don't have to plan too far ahead, but think past your next upgrade. Consider the event cycles, and leave expensive upgrades for these times. IT (Imitation Game) yields a lot of resources every Friday. Depending on your time zone and waking/working hours you might be able to do two events right after the other. The Mega Crab on the last weekend of each month can give you a lot of resources, make sure you max your storages for your level by then and if you are at a point where you can only upgrade turrets, then keep expensive upgrades to start during the event. Wait until you collect your resource boats. I already talked about the tribe boat. You can also wait to collect the other two: You have until the next day to collect the daily reward and until the end of the next OP to collect the Operation reward. Spend Diamonds if that fits your real life schedule better, otherwise just be patient.
UPGRADE ORDER
I already said you should focus on offense - let's be a bit more specific. Upgrade the following, in this order, as soon as you can:
HQ (Headquaters - unlock new troops, abilities, LCs, upgrade levels - no downside to upgrading)
ARMORY (start this with normal resources, then finish it instantly with Diamonds - that's the best use for Diamonds and allows you to have an Armory upgrade going at all times)
SCULPTOR (extra statue slot)
VAULT (pulls the teeth out of getting raided with each upgrade)
LCs (Landing Crafts - bring more troops; less important at certain HQ levels, depending on your troop combo, but don't fall behind too much. While a LC is upgrading you can still use the troops on it, but if they die you can't retrain them until the upgrade finishes. You might want to save that attack with all troops for your OP attack.)
GB (Gun Boat - gain extra GBE; this can make a big difference)
Other people might suggest slightly different orders, and those are fine, too. Just try to max all of these as soon as you can. If at any time you have enough EXP for the next HQ, interrupt the cycle and start again at the top. Next, you upgrade what you need/want most. Storages are important, and I recommend upgrading the Radar in such a way that you always have some regions to explore. Turrets are definetely last.
ARMORY UPGRADES
Try to always have an upgrade going in the Armory. When you get a new level, first upgrade Barrage and Artillery. Then upgrade your main troop combo, then other GBAs (Gun Boat Abilities). Then upgrade troops you might want to use or switch to in the future. I suggest Zookas (especially for OPs (Operations)), Scorchers and Bombardiers as troops that are also good to have, regardless of what you mainly use. Just don't try to evenly upgrade everything, that will take too long and leave you too weak.
TROOP COMBOS
I won't give you specific advice on what to use. Have a look at what works, see what you like and pick something. Consider that the main game, OPs and the Crab all work a bit differently - e.g. Warriors are a fine choice for the main game, but they won't get you far with the other two, so you might want to also upgrade something else. Personally, I used Warriors early on, then switched to TMed (Tanks and Medics), then added Grenardiers in the mix, then switched to Torcher (Tanks and Scorchers), now adding Bombardiers or useing All Scorchers. That has worked well for me, but it's not a recommendation - e.g. HZ/Hooka (Heavies and Zookas) is one of the strongest combinations in the game, as is RZCM (Riflemen, Zookas, Cryoneers, Medics). Take your pick. Eventually you will have every troop upgraded anyway, but until then, make some choices.
HEROES
Heroes, their various abilities and how you use them make a big difference in your attacks. I won't go into detail here, I suggest you look up how and when to get the other 3 heroes, and what their abilities are. Focus on maxing the more important of these abilities, rather than spending your Tokens on abilities you don't need and having too few Tokens for the good ones.
STATUES
This is one of the most important aspects of BB. Let me start with the second most frequent advice one can find in the comments: Don't use green or blue statues. Just don't. Blue statues (Ice) do have a purpose and you will see everyone at the top of the leaderboard using them (and boosting all of them). I won't go into it, but believe me, Ice does a lot less for a lower level base - not enough to justify occupying a statue slot. And green statues (Life) are definately not worth it at all. I already said that saving resources doesn't work and that production buildings are not much of a factor. Since green statues help with these things that don't work, don't use them. They do much less than the percentage might suggest, anyway. Upgrades always keep getting more expensive, but the amount you get from green statues doesn't increase much (just a little bit when you upgrade a production building or gain a new resource base, and there's a limit to both). You are much better off with even a single RR (resource reward) statue. While you would need to waste multiple spots and maybe PP (Power Powder) on several green statues, RR statues boost all your rewards and in just a few attacks you get more extra loot than the greens would have produced for you in a day - that is, if you don't get raided that day and lose the resources again. Don't use green statues. Another statue type that is probably not worth using is PSC (Power Stone Chance). Again, the percentage value of the statue might make it sound much better than it is. Getting Power Stones is important, but you can get enough by playing the game without a PSC statue and have the slot free to put to better use. What you should use are red statues (Magma) which give you either extra TD (Troop Damage) or TH (Troop Health) and purple (Dark) GBE (Gun Boat Energy) statues. While you are still at a low level, purple RR statues are also extremely useful. One RR statue might be enough, and lets you put down more offensive ones, but I suggest you use two, or even three, if you buy Extra Builders. There is no one-size-fits-all recommendation for how many of each of these you should have. You can only have one MP (Masterpiece) of each kind, so definately put out one of each type. If you use SZ (Smokey Zooka) on OPs (or aim to do so in the future) or All Scorcher, you will need a quite a few GBE statues (3 or 4, or even 5). Otherwise you might want to focus on the red statues, especially TD, which will also be essential for getting far in the Crab. It depends on your goals and the troop combos you use - you can easily find more specific advice elsewhere.
GETTING MORE RED AND PURPLE POWER STONES
You mostly get purple stones from Dr. T events, red ones from IT (Immitation Game) and normal bases, and all kinds as rewards from boats, the Supply Chest, the Crab, Warships and the Submarine. If you follow the advice here, red and purple Power Stones will be more valuable to you than green and blue ones. There is a little trick that lets you get more of them: Instead of turning blues and greens into PP right away, upgrade them to the highest level (Crystal) but then hang on to them. Every now and then the Trader will have a deal where you can convert a certain number of one kind to another. This way you might be able to turn up to 25 blue/green Crystals into 25 red/purple ones right away. Keep in mind that there is an achievement for destroying 3000 statues, if you want that, then build statues rather than converting the stones directly.
STATUE STORAGE
This is definately not a high priority building, but it can be rather useful. You can store newly made statues here to deploy them later. Just know that you cannot swap out active statues. Once a statue is placed you can only destroy it, you can't put it into storage. That makes statue choices a lot more important - you can't simply swap out TD/TH/GBE as you need it or use those for attacking and Ice when you're offline. Still, the Statue Storage is useful: You can save a statue for your next Sculptor upgrade (when you unlock a new slot), you can save statues to replace others later on (like RR statues you don't want anymore), you can save Ice MPs (if you really must), or you can save TD/TH guardians to swap out when you're trying to go far on the Mega Crab.
BOOSTING STATUES
Over time you will collect PP (Power Powder), either as rewards, for example from the Mega Crab, or from destroying MPs/converting Power Cyrstals (gaining you 7 PPs). These PPs can be used to boost statues, doubling the percentage of their bonus. This lasts for 3 days on green statues, 8 hours on blue statues and 3 hours on red and purple statues. You can add more time with more PP any time. Use this option wisely. When you can do your attacks without boosting, do so, but use it when you need it. Your TF might require boosts, and it's generally worth boosting when you attack the Mega Crab. I suggest boosting your RR statues, since that way you can easily get a lot from just a few attacks. In any case, find a balance where over time you are still gaining more PP than you use - you might want it later on in the game.
TRADER
The Trader arrives for every weekend. The deals she offers are mostly nonsense and not worth it, but sometimes you can exchange Power Stones or resources to your advantage. Appart from the deals you can also get Trader Crates, by paying 3 Tickets that you earn by playing the game (the first Crate is free each week). There are differrent kind of Crates, giving you very small or rather large rewards. There is a fixed cycle, and you won't get two huge rewards right after the other. Get these crates when you need them, but if you count on getting a specific extra resource, you had better have a couple of tickets. One nice effect is that the resources you get from crates can overflow your storages. These crates are also your main source of Hero Tokens, used to upgrade Hero abilities.
WHAT TO DO WITH GOLD
Wood, Stone and Iron are used to uprade structures (buildings, boats). As you level up and upgrade your structures you will see that you need mostly Wood at first, then more and more Stone, then more and more Iron. Gold is used for a number of things: You use it to pay for Armory upgrades - that is one of the most important aspects and you should try to always have enough Gold for your next upgrade (by planning to attack, not by saving up). You also use it to upgrade your Heroes, which is important but should not be done at the expense of an Armory upgrade. Next up is exploring new regions. It's good to always have something to explore so you don't waste Gold, when you have a lot of it, so upgrade your Radar accordingly. No need to go crazy maxing your Radar and exploring everything you can, though. That will just put you on more people's map, which doesn't help you. You can look up specific guides for when you should upgrade your Radar, where to get which Hero, &c. There's even a guide on how to avoid playing against other people for a while, if you want, although that won't speed up your progress. Next, Gold is also needed to attack and to retrain lost troops. The prices for both go up as you reach new EXP levels and upgrade your troops. For me this has never been a problem, just be careful when you are low on Gold - e.g. avoid this scenario: starting an Armory upgrade you can barely afford, then attacking to gain other resources for another upgrade, only to not have enough Gold to attack/retrain. There's two more things you can do with Gold: You can pay for Submarine Dives and convert it to Raw Crystals. Treat both of these as a way to get rid of extra Gold. The Submarine lets you convert Gold into other resources, Diamonds, Power Stones and Prototype Modules with a small chance to get a Classified Item. Upgrade your Submarine and go for deep dives with question marks, put don't prioritize it over more important things.
TRIBES
You discover these fairly early, but you can't use them for anything until much later. You can unlock two tribes at HQ 18 and the other four at HQ 20 (with max Radar). As soon as you unlock the first Tribe you also gain the ability to convert any of your 4 resources into Raw Cyrstals, which are used for Tribe Boosts. Use this to get rid of extra resources, but it's not worth spending resources you need for an upgrade. The exchange rate for each rescource gets worse every time you convert that resource, but it resets every two weeks. Raw Crystals can be used to upgrade Tribes and to buy Tribe boosts. Each Tribe can be upgraded to level 5, at which point you can buy its boost 5 times and won't lose out on resources when using its militia. The boosts also reset every two weeks.
TRIBE BOOSTS
These will be more or less relevant for you each time, but can make a huge difference. You might get more resources, or more Power Stones from attacking, more GBE or a cost reduction for a GBA, various boosts to a single troop (more damage, more health, higher speed, life leech,...), and damage or health boosts for certain defenses. I suggest you focus on maxing the Spiritdancer and Lifewell Tribes, then the two offensive ones, then the defensive ones. Get the boosts you want and can afford.
TRIBE MILITIA - DESTROY BUTTON
Once you unlock a Tribe you get the option to immediately destroy any NPC bases in the Tribe's area, and once a Tribe is fully upgraded, that option starts making sense. You get all the resources (including extra from RR statues or Tribe boosts), but don't have to waste time attacking it. If you choose to use PSC statues, you might want to attack them manually, anyway, because you can get slightly more Power Stones. And you might want to attack them if your pool of 200 extra VPs from NPC bases is not yet depleted - you don't get any of those from using the Destroy button.
UPGRADING TURRETS
Even when you play offensivly and neglect your defenses, there will be times when you have no other buildings to uprade, so you will have to build or upgrade turrets to gain EXP for your next HQ level. It's hard to say what the optimal strategy is at this point. You have two main choices. A) You upgrade whatever gives you the most EXP per time to progress as fast as possible- typically that will be lower level turrets. B) You upgrade (and max) the most useful turrets first. I'm not giving any recommendations here. I went with option B and maxed the following for my level, in that order: SLs (Shock Launchers), RLs (Rocket Launchers), BCs (Boom Cannons), CNs (Cannons). The priority order here depends on which troops you want to counter most. High level BCs seem to be a decent deterrent against some players, but that's just my impression. Remember, you will never be able to stop determined attackers, at any level.
BASE LAYOUT
Since I suggest you focus on offense, this won't matter for a long time. At any rate, the goal should not be to defend against attacks (that doesn't work) but rather to gain Diamonds and Intel when you get raided. Set up your defenses with that in mind. You will get raided, but you can try to cause enough casualties to get the rewards. Its hard to defend against every single troop combo with one layout - try to set up a base that can deal some damage to the most common ones, rather than being good against just one. Hide your mines! This will be next to useless against players that scout properly, but I find that most don't. You can hide mines behind a lot of things - some work better than others. Try Statues, the Iron Mine, high level turrets like STs (Sniper Towers), BCs, CNs, Stone Storages. Group normal mines together in groups of 3, so that Medics can't out-heal the damage dealt to low health troops. Place Shock Mines in the most likely path of Warrior rushes. Put some Boom Mines around the HQ. Think about - and observe - where your attackers will most likely use Barrage and avoid putting any mines in that area. Don't have trees in places where they turn transparent because there is a mine behind them.
WEAPONS LAB - PROTOTYPE DEFENSES
I won't say much about those, except that you should save your prototype modules rather than place proto defenses as soon as you can. They won't do much for you early on, and it will be nice to have enough modules stockpiled later on, allowing you to place more and better ones. By then you won't need my advice on how to use them.
SPENDING MONEY
This is a personal choice, it certainly isn't necessary. I don't think that it's ever worth buying Diamonds or the "special offers" you sometimes get, but I have been buying Instant Training for a while now, and that is worth it for me. It definately helps with the Crab. Extra builders let you progress faster; if you consistently get them, you might want to deploy an additional RR guardian.
TF
TFs (Taskforces) are one the best aspects of BB. Join one as soon as you can. TFs do OPs (Operations) together, attacking the same bases (not at the same time), with the damage done by one registered and saved for subsequent attacks. Just join one, you'll find out how it works. Each OP lasts 24 hours and you only have one attack per OP - try not to miss it! You should find a TF that fits your activity level, experience level and (to a lesser extend) HQ level. When you first join a TF as a low level player you might feel useless, but that doesn't have to be the case. You might be able to finish off a defenseless PC (Powercore), allowing other members to attack a hard target, or you might be able to take out some key defenses or mines. The troops you use in the main game might not be useful for OP attacks - don't bring Warriors. HZ/Hooka might be a good all-around choice, Tanks work in the lower and medium range of OPs and AZ (All Zookas) can be phenomenal, but without Smoke and lots of GBE that won't work too well for a lower level player. Learn from the others in your TF, and follow base notes and instructions in the chat. One thing that can make your attacks very effective, even at a low level, is Cpt. Everspark's Universal Remote, so try to get Sparky as soon as you can. You don't even have to upgrade Universal Remote, it works just fine on the first level, and lets you take out key defenses.
MEGA CRAB
This event happens every month, on the last weekend of the month. You get 40 attacks, and when you don't destroy a stage in one attack, the damage you caused is saved, just like in OPs, IT, or the War Factory. When you destroy a stage you gain one more attack. You can get a lot of resources from this event. If you want to go far, you will need high level troops and a good statue setup. You can only get a Legendary Trophy if you got a Diamond Trophy the year before.
WARSHIPS
This is a whole different game mode. I like it a lot by itself, others hate it. Getting to the Diamond tier isn't too hard, though and gives you 500 Diamonds, plus lots of other loot (in the season reward and over the course of it) for the main game. Here are some very basic tips: It takes some getting used to. Just remember that it's about being faster than your opponents - so focus on everything that makes your attacks not only successful but also fast. All Heavies, All Heavy Choppas, Flares, TD, TH, Bombardiers are things to look out for in every season, but there are nuances and every season is different. Set up your Warship not to defend against an attack, but to make it last as long as possible. Look at the tech tree, look ahead and ask yourself what you will absolutely need and what you will not need - choose wisely. Watch your opponent's attacks, and learn from their tactics and base layouts. Generally, try to get to the next ER (Engine Room) level quickly, rather than hanging out at one level for a long time. Many people seem to struggle with the Sky Shield proto defense - you can actually often flare something that seems protected; focus on the lower one of the two circles. There is much more to say, but this will have to do as beginner's tips.
CLIMBING ON THE LEADERBOARD
Once you are in a position to do this you are far beyond the need of these tips. You will need to reconsider your statue choices at a certain point (saving Ice statues in storage might come in handy). Also, I can't confirm this, but I heard that it's a good idea not to destroy the last stage of Dr. T events, as that is supposed to give you a slightly higher chance of getting a player base in an invasion.
USEFUL ONLINE RESOURCES
You already know this on (https://www.reddit.com/BoomBeach/), check these out, if you don't know them:
https://www.reddit.com/boombeachrecruit/
https://boombeach.fandom.com/wiki/Boom_Beach_Wiki
https://hoppernet.net/
There's also many YouTube videos and Channels worth looking at. Have fun playing Boom Beach!

Greetings all. This is going to be quite long and well developed. If you have any fun or useful tips but don’t want to read this novel, please leave them in the comments!
Today, I want to get further insight into a specific character concept. We’re all aware of the Spike Growth/Repelling Blast/Grasp of Hadar shenanigans which Tasha’s now makes quite a bit more viable. This is further increased with the Crusher Feat.
This isn’t specifically a combat build, as I want it to have enough RP value to be fun out of combat too.
I LOVE Warlocks in 5e and this may be my favorite subclass to date in terms of flavor.
Background:
The concept is an enslaved belly dancesex slave steals a ring after a fight breaks out in the hookah bar where she dances. Later, she inspects the ring and awakens the Dao genie within.
He offers her the deal of a lifetime. She gets 3 wishes (of course) in exchange for finding an unspecified number of artifacts and giving him a portion. Without thinking, she agreed and immediately wishes for her freedom. Boom. No longer a slave. Her previous owner forgets who she is and no one who has ever seen her to this point remembers her.
She thinks back on those who have abused her over the years and decides revenge will be her next wish. Not simple revenge, but dynamic revenge and justice for others like herself. She wishes to have a taste of sorcery. Phenomenal cosmic power! Itty bitty living space...
She becomes “the Pusher” (or cheese grater) to turn slavers (and other enemies) into meat crayons. Spike Growth flavored like a field of jagged stones (Dao flavor), using EB to push and pull them through it. A paragon for the lowly and meek.
Without realizing it, she is slowly taking on the greed and pride of the Dao. This evolves to the point that she loses her initial zeal for ending slavery outright and begins making temporary puppets of her own.
The third and final wish, she demands a lifetime of wealth and how to gain it. The Dao has been saving his dark twist for just such an open wording. He grants her knowledge of artifacts of power and a mental catalog of valuable things, but not the objects themselves or their locations. She’ll have to acquire them on her own and he’ll still take his cut along the way. This final wish freed the Dao from his own contract (bound to the ring until he grants a mortal 3 wishes) and prison, but in turn bound her to the ring.
She is becoming what she once hated and battles to balance her own greed, ambition, and morality. I kinda of want to play her like Robin Williams, both in how he was a charismatic Genie and his real life jovial facade which masked crippling depression.
Character Development:
Initially, Mountain Dwarf stuck out. Armor is nice, as is the double stat boost and stone theme, but if felt a little flat in terms of the character concept. Mechanically it was the best, but something just felt dull.
Next, I considered High Half-Elf variant. +2/+1/+1 stats. Elegant, delicate frame. Dark Vision. Fey Ancestry and a bonus cantrip. However, the half-elf is so overused as I wanted this character to be unique.
Changing direction, I went with the custom lineage. Maybe something like a nymph? Small size (4’ or so and ~45 lbs) for movement benefits and hiding behind larger creatures, without losing any movement speed. +2 CHA. Proficiency in Persuasion and a feat. Thematically and mechanically, Fey Touched (CHA) fits. It gives a 3rd point in CHA and 2 “free” spells with each long rest. Misty Step is appropriate with a genie patron and I’d have taken it anyway. It’s really nice to have a level 2 spell at level 1 is ridiculous. Making it free is gravy. The other could be Sleep or Command. I chose Command for the Dao flavor and synergy with Spike Growth.
That feels really, really good.
Stats, Levels, and Justification:
As a belly dancer, she’s quite agile and charismatic, able to read people. She’s gained a sort of fortitude from years of abuse. She isn’t very strong or wise in the ways of the world, often making bad choices because of it. She can read and write fairly well from watching her slave merchant master do business, but isn’t especially intelligent otherwise.
STR DEX CON INT WIS CHA 8 15 15 8 8 15(+3)
Studded leather: 14 AC, Quarterstaff, light crossbow, Arcane Focus (the Ring), Dungeoneer’s Pack.
Background: Charlatan - Deception, Sleight of Hand, Disguise Kit, Forgery Kit. False Identity feature. (All thematically appropriate)
Proficiencies: Persuasion (Race), Deception (background), Sleight of Hand (background), Investigation, Intimidation.
Level 1: Eldritch Blast, Mage Hand (for carrying her vessel while inside, general mischief, and utility), Charm Person (flavor), Sanctuary(flavor), plus free Misty Step and Command as above. Bottled Respite: Free Bag of Holding and private hookah lounge once per long rest. Genie’s Wrath: +2 damage boost that grows with time.
Level 2: Eldritch Invocations: Grasp of Hadar, Repelling Blast. Armor of Agathys.
level 3: Pact Boon. Invisibility, trade Charm Person for Spike Growth. Build comes online.
She’ll further the Dao theme with Pact of the Chain for the Imp familiar, which happens to be able to carry 45 lbs and can fly while being invisible. It also grants her Devil’s Sight 120’ darkvision not impeded by magical darkness. Sweet. On demand flying and magical resistance with a lenient DM per the Variant: Imp Familiar rules on page 70 of the Monster Manual. Granting advantage with the Help action so my Cheese Grater actually works. It can also carry the Genie’s Vessel: Ring while being entirely invisible as an “Oh Shit” button with Bottles Respite. 2 hours should be plenty of time to escape almost any dire circumstance while she smokes hookah in her personal palace. Can be used in combination with Command to steal equipment. She rains death upon foes from up to 120’ in the air.
This is a huge level!
Level 4: Minor Illusion, Suggestion, trade Sanctuary for Darkness. Crusher Feat for +1 CON and more cheese for the grater thanks to Genie’s Wrath.
Level 5: Counterspell, replace Suggestion with Hypnotic Pattern. Extra EB beam for greater heating. Eldritch Invocation: Agonizing Blast for damage, Lance of Lethargy for control, Mask of Many Faces for RP, Tomb of Leviticus for self preservation, or Voice of the Chain Master for RP. I’m leaning toward Agonizing Blast.
Level 6: Fireball, replace Armor of Agathys with Thunder Step. Elemental Gift: Resistance to Bludgeoning and Flight 3/day allowing the Imp to resume the Help action or deliver potions, etc.
I might take 3 levels of Sorcerer at some point for extra spells, extra spell slots, more EB’s via Quicken, and Subtle or Twinning for utility. Probably Divine Soul after repenting for her heinous past.
So, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Any suggestions or areas I’m lacking? Am I missing anything? I can’t wait to play this character!

As of today, it has now been 3 full years since I’ve gotten my Switch. So, like the past 2 years, I wanted to post my top 10 games I played throughout the last year with some quick little reviews on why I enjoyed them. To avoid confusion this list is not a list of my top 10 games of 2020, it is a top 10 of the games I have played in the last year. Some of the games this year surprised the hell out of me, and others were extremely welcome due to old memories. Each game here I include my playtime (according to the Switch, anyways) and my completion percentage. Since it was asked a lot in the comments last year, I will be including a link to a Google Docs sheet that includes a link to a duplicate version of my sheet (with some things unimportant to anyone but me removed or edited) that I use to track completion percentages as well as information on how to use the sheet.
Currently playing: -
Backlog: Assassin’s Creed: The Rebel Collection, BioShock: The Collection, DOOM 64, Hollow Knight, Trials of Mana, Ys Origin
Games from this year that didn’t make the top 10:
· DOOM II (5+ hours, 100.00%)
· DOOM (1993) (5+ hours, 100.00%)
· Assassin’s Creed III Remastered (25+ hours, 39.78%)
· DOOM 3 (10+ hours, 75.00%)
· Darksiders Genesis (15+ hours, 63.60%)
· Darksiders II Deathinitive Edition (45+ hours, 85.75%)
· Super Mario 3D All-Stars (50+ hours, 84.59%)
· Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition (90+ hours, 92.38%)
10) Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout (40+ hours, 94.95%)
Yea, yea. Look at those thicc thighs! Now that that’s out of the way… I really enjoyed my time with Ryza. The alchemy system is what got me interested in the game, gathering materials to fuse together into more powerful items. As you learn more about the system and get access to better items everything begins to make more sense. You might find yourself just slotting things in at first, but eventually once you gain a better understanding you can figure out exactly what the system is getting you to do. Crafting endgame items with crazy stats and really showing off your skills as an alchemist is extremely fulfilling and from what I can tell the series has really improved on itself from past iterations. The story of Ryza is fairly grounded and tame for the most part, but it does still have some “save the world” aspect towards the end. You play as Ryza who wants to adventure with her friends and learn alchemy and… that’s pretty much the main focus for the first half or more. It was kind of a nice break and really helped it to stand out a bit more in my mind. The main point of the story really is just Ryza wanting to adventure after being stuck on a lonely, plain little island for her whole life. Once she is exposed to alchemy, she makes it her mission to improve her alchemy skills. The combat is an ATB system which was my biggest holdback of the game going in but in reality it was very quick and simple to get into and really didn’t require a lot of work to figure out. The one thing is that if you do not keep up on your alchemy skills you will struggle in battles. Constantly looking for ways to improve your gear is very important and you can easily find yourself running at a wall if you ignore it for long periods of time. It is definitely an interesting game to play and I really recommend looking into it for those of you interested in JRPGs. With the sequel coming out in just a month, and it being the first time in the series’ history (from what I know) that a protagonist has returned for a sequel, it is the perfect time to hop in.
9) Astral Chain (40+ hours, 84.20%)
I expected this game to be on par with or worse than Bayonetta 2. Then I actually played it and, well, I loved it significantly more. This game features a rating system very similar to the Bayonetta series, but the system is also significantly more lenient. Instead of judging you on how perfectly you can complete a level (not being hit, time, not using items, etc.) you are judged on how well you use your resources. You get bonuses for using different techniques, weapons, and legions. At first I still got low scores and did overall poorly, however because the rating system was so much more lenient and focused more on how well you are using the combat system it was a really good way to learn what was the best way to go about combat. This led to later files getting better scores and really making the whole game feel even more entertaining. The story is pretty straight forward; you’re a cop who ends up working for a branch of cops that use legions, basically enemies turned into allies, that are attached to a chain and fight against those same enemies. These legions are controlled alongside yourself, which seems a lot more daunting than it really is. While I am by no means a pro at the game, I do think it was fairly easy to get used to controlling multiple characters even with all the action going on. As far as weak points, there was only one major thing that bothered me and it was the same as Dragon Quest XI. I don’t like this game’s use of a silent protagonist. I felt that it robbed a lot of story moments of any impact because your character feels completely disconnected from a plot that they are supposed to be at the center of. Your character even has a voice actor, but they are only used when you are playing as the other gender. It wasn’t something that drastically impacts the game for me, but it still bothered me enough to mention. Overall, the rest of the game is a lot of fun and works really well. The whole thing is like its own anime and it even has an anime-style intro sequence, which by the way the music is top notch. Which is pretty important if you’re going to have an action game that you’ll want music to hype you up.. So if you’d like to play Anime Cops vs Cyber Demons ft. Litterbugs, then this is the game for you.
8) Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition (10+ hours, 98.58%)
It had been a long time since I played a Metroidvania, so this game was a welcome return for me. The movement available to you from the start is fairly limited, but you keep picking up skills over time until eventually it becomes incredibly smooth to dash around the world. The story is mostly told through a couple of momentary scenes, so there aren’t a lot of cutscenes besides the opening. I believe despite how brief the story is, the story of Kuro and the opening act are both amazing moments in not just this game but out of all games I have played. The soundtrack is beautiful and I found myself just hanging around to listen to it a few times. On top of all these elements, it also runs beautifully and never gave me a single problem. I may not have been a professional at the game, I believe I ended my playthrough with just under 500 deaths, but I never became frustrated with it. Besides completing the areas, you don’t have too much to focus on for collectibles. All you really have is life containers, energy containers, and spirit containers. Life and energy containers obviously improve your life and your energy, but spirit containers is used to build up your spirit gauge and act as skill points. These skill points can be used to unlock movement options like dashing and triple jumps as well as power boosts. It’s a fun system and I’m glad that there isn’t as much to really need to worry about while you’re exploring. The game is a constant rush to get better and improve your movement. It was a pure experience the entire way through. The entire game just radiates charm and despite it being a short game I feel like it will stick with me for a long time.
7) Ori and the Will of the Wisps (15+ hours, 96.46%)
This game was an absolute gem to play… mostly. There were some minor bugs involving moving between areas if I went through too fast or falling through the ground once or twice, and I did need to redo about an hour of work because of a glitch once, but besides that the game played beautifully. Movement in this game felt so much more rewarding much earlier than the original because most of the tools are unlocked early. This lets you get more practice in earlier instead of having things feel like they didn’t get a lot of time. I also like how things like Dash were actually built into the level design because it wasn’t attached to the skill tree this time. With more tools to use and design levels around, it made the game feel a lot more interesting to play around with. Speaking of levels, the world is amazing. The levels are all much more expansive and the world itself feels more natural. With extra movement options, the ability to move from one part of the map to another feels significantly quicker as well. The music in the game is just as incredible as the original, so no complaints there as well. It also includes more content through things like side quests, races, and projects to clean up a base camp of sorts. The story is more involved this time instead of being relegated mostly to a handful of cutscenes, although once you get past the first dungeon of the game it isn’t all that present. The basic premise is that Ori gets stuck in a new area and has to help remove the dark influence. I don’t think Shriek is as compelling of a character as Kuro, but that’s mostly because I really enjoyed Kuro’s role in the story. Combat is the big change from the original compared to everything else. Combat in the Blind Forest was basically relegated to telling Sein to fire at enemies and was more of an afterthought that an actual use. This is reflected in the fact that there are no boss fights in the original, only escape sequences. While Will of the Wisps does still have a handful of escape sequences, there are also boss fights. You have access to multiple weapons if you choose to unlock them, but your main weapon will be a sword. You can find Spirit Shards to equip to power up various aspects or grant different abilities like triple jump. Overall, it was a very nice improvement over the original and I think that if you enjoyed the Blind Forest at all then it is definitely worth buying this game.
6) Animal Crossing: New Horizons (370+ hours, 92.10%)
Here’s the game that I, like many others, always had one question in mind whenever I heard people talk about it. “What do you even do?”. I spent a majority of my time in the early days in a completionist mindset for the game which I think is why I was mostly burned out on it for a month or two once I had gotten the K.K. Slider concert for the first time. However, once I went into this game and started really working on the layout of my island I got legitimately interested. When things were no longer a checklist or a set of chores, it was just fun. While I look online at all the amazing islands that people have made and I can’t even dream of coming close to them, I’m proud of my little island. I decided to not do any terraforming (with a couple of small exceptions like cutting out a few squares for stairs or pushing a waterfall back by 1 so it was visible behind a bridge). By doing this it really feels like I’ve turned a barren island into a home. This game definitely isn’t for everyone though. The question of “What do you really do?” is a very real question, and something you need to figure out if you would enjoy essentially doing things with no reward except making a new home for yourself. You also need to accept that you can’t really play this in the same way as other games, as I learned when I was trying to just do everything. This game works best in short bursts or by having a preset goal in mind of what you want to accomplish in that play session. While Animal Crossing doesn’t really have a story, character development, or even that amazing of a soundtrack (which is still good and works extremely well for the game but is not extremely memorable) like most of my other favorite games as of late it is definitely a game I have found myself going back to continuously. The only thing I wish is that the villagers had more personality. I look at past games in the series and see the villagers I have on my island with distinct personalities that really make them into their own characters. With 8 personality types that give each villager the same set of lines, and 10 available houses for them, you’re going to end up with repeats and it really kills the immersion when you talk to 2 villagers in a row and hear the same thing. Besides that, I really enjoy the decoration aspect of things, especially some of the more natural areas of my island where I really got a forest-y feel out of it. I really enjoy watching things come together. When you wind up with a finished (or at least mostly finished) island and can walk through and look at all the progress you’ve made you really get a sense of accomplishment.
5) Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (55+ hours, 85.58%)
Pokemon Mystery Dungeon is my favorite spinoff franchise by a landslide. Taking the world of Pokemon and inserting it into a roguelike genre with a story and characters beyond anything across the mainline games combined. Unfortunately, based on critic scores and sales throughout the years, most Pokemon fans don’t share that sentiment. That being said, PMD is also much more difficult in comparison to the mainline games, especially in the postgame, which may be what pushes most people away. The main story of PMD involves you, a human, becoming a Pokemon and losing your memory. You form a rescue team with another Pokemon (you determine both your Pokemon and your partner in the beginning, with a personality test determining yours unless you want to choose it yourself) and aim to figure out what happened to make you transform while also helping Pokemon across the world. The story can get extremely dark for a Pokemon game and it is really good at keeping you wanting to see more. The postgame in PMD games is typically some of the best that I have come across. If you go through everything, the postgame can be just as long as the main story with much more challenging encounters. The gameplay revolves around taking missions and going into randomly-generated dungeons in order to rescue stranded Pokemon. Being a roguelike, you move tile by tile and your enemies only move when you do. It works well for the turn-based combat that Pokemon uses. I believe there is still a demo on the eshop that goes through the first couple of dungeons, so I definitely recommend trying the game out. I’m desperately hoping that we get to see more of the PMD franchise on Switch, with my personal hope being a new game and maybe even later on a remake of the Explorers games.
4) The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition (140+ hours, 86.76%)
Witcher 3 definitely gets the “Most Improved” award in terms of my initial thoughts of a game compared to the end. Due to the praise that Witcher 3 always got, I decided to give it a shot. Right from the beginning, it was overall pretty mixed. Combat especially took me a little bit to get used to, with the initial fight against the Griffin taking a lot to pull off. However, once I left White Orchard and got to Velen (and by extension began to understand the combat more thoroughly) the doubt slowly started disappearing. One of the things that I, and of course many others, found best about playing Witcher were the side quests. Side quests are typically very standard. “Save my cat”. “Kill 5 of that monster”. The side quests in Witcher 3 are much more fleshed out and multiple times I found myself having to stop and think about my decisions in them. Without going too much into spoilers, one of my favorite decisions I had to make for a quest came with handling the aftermath of a slaughtered village, leaving behind a lone child, and how you handle those responsible. While some decisions might seem simple to make based on your own moral compass, I always strived to make the decisions I believed Geralt would make. It’s the first time that I can say a game really made me stop and make myself into the character. Putting the “role play” into RPG. While Witcher has its fair few “Kill that monster” quests (a specific type of quest, Contracts), these are more acceptable since even these have story built around them and usually involve some level of investigation and build-up. You’re not going to have to go hunt down 10 Nekkers and then come back to some generic villager conversation. While the side quests are an amazing part of the game, they don’t completely overshadow the main story. You’re hunting down Ciri, your adopted daughter, and so you have to go to various locations throughout the world to follow leads on where she has been recently. Each of these areas have their own stories that explode out in a hundred different directions and lead to tons of time to spend in each area. Between side quests and exploration, I didn’t complete the story until 105+ hours into the game. I probably could have finished it sooner, but the side quests and the world around was way too interesting to just skip over. However there is still the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions to go through which add even more playtime. Both of these stories are really well done and deal with some amazing character moments and decisions. The characters are always an important part to get right in a story this large, and they are done excellently. Some of the standouts from my playthrough are Yennefer, the Baron, Gaunter O’Dimm, and Regis. They all play their roles in the story without feeling like just some key to get from point A to point B. While you’re in the mind of Geralt, you really start to get an understanding of them. Who they are, what they might do, what they like. Your conversations will always highlight which choice will continue you along the story, but skipping over the other dialogue options leaves you missing out on the world that has been crafted. Overall, the game definitely deserves the praise it gets. The beginning is slow, and the combat/movement can be a bit clunky and unintuitive, but the world on display is something I can’t ignore when it comes to being an amazing game.
3) AI: The Somnium Files (30+ hours, 100.00%)
Where to even begin with this game? This is by far the strangest game I’ve ever played… but I love it for that. In this game you are a detective, Kaname Date, who is investigating a series of murders where the victim has their left eye removed. Date has an AI companion in his eyeball named Aiba, who by the way has probably made her way into my top 10 game characters of all time. The game is a visual novel for most of the gameplay. You will visit various sites and look around the room and examine the background looking for things as well as asking questions of people around you. In the case of background items these will not always be related to the case and a lot of the time it is just humor, but I still recommend checking everything just because it is a lot of fun to hear the character interactions. The humor in the game is pretty sexual for the earlier parts but that tends to get toned down further into the different routes. The other part of the gameplay is very different in structure. Date is not a normal detective, he is instead part of a secret division called ABIS which goes into dreams, called Somnium, in order to find out more about a case. When you are in a Somnium you can move around freely, however there is a 6-minute time limit. When you are moving this time limit will continue as normal, but it will slow down drastically when you do not move. You examine various items in order to progress through the puzzle and get to the end to figure out where you’re going. Sometimes these Somnium will have a branching path that will send you down a different route in the game. There are 5 different routes to complete, and you will want to complete them all otherwise the game is ridiculously short and you basically don’t even get any answers to what is going on. It is really easy to go back and complete other routes however. You have access to a flowchart that you can select various sections and go to an individual section of a day or just play through the area as a whole. So you are able to just select a Somnium with a branching path and go from there. These routes all have the same basic concepts but small changes and focuses on different characters will lead you to a different end and give you new details about the case overall. Every time you think you have come up with a conclusion about what is going on the game throws another wrench until just at the end where it starts giving you the final pieces of the puzzle and you just start throwing them together in your head and watch it unfold. The final ending of the game is one of the few games I can say has actually gotten tears out of me and it was an amazing experience all around. I definitely recommend looking into the game as it was a lot of fun to play through and the constant twists and turns of the story are an amazing experience.
2) Fire Emblem: Three Houses (245+ hours, 97.39%)
Let me just say that when I finally got this game for Christmas last year, I didn’t put it down until I had finished it. I fell in love with the characters and teaching them to become ruthless killing machines. The different experiences and points of view that you could take on different paths was amazing, finding small details in one path that add connections to other paths. While my first and favorite path will always be the Black Eagle route, the other routes all add various details that you can’t get through just one story. To understand everything going on in the game, you need to play it all. No one path contains all the information in the game, and by playing through them all you gain a deeper understanding for character motivations and how the world is. The combat was simple enough for beginners to the strategy genre but also allows for more difficult experiences with things like Maddening (not my type of playstyle). The Divine Pulse mechanic, giving you the ability to rewind to a specific action in the battle in order to undo a mistake and/or death, is a crutch that I mostly relied on early in the game before eventually outgrowing it and learning how to handle the battlefield better with more strategy and better units in subsequent playthroughs. While I originally played on Casual Mode, I switched to Classic for my other playthroughs and found myself thrilled by the challenge that permadeath provided. By the end of my Classic playthroughs I had always managed to keep my characters safe, never losing a single one (Divine Pulse excluded). There’s something so much more thrilling about the battles when the game is less about who you can sacrifice and more about how to safely fight your way through. On top of the combat, I of course have to talk about the music. Another one of my favorite soundtracks (I feel like I’m saying that about just about every JRPG I play) and one I’m always happy to hear come on in my playlist. It's amazing to me that I was so worried about my interest in the game and that a franchise I had brushed off in the past would overtake Breath of the Wild in my favorite Switch games. While this game is fantastic and would have absolutely stolen the show if I had played it for last year… because I waited it unfortunately had to place after a game that I knew straight from the reveal would be in my top 2 Switch games, top 2 games period at that, of all time.
1) Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (280+ hours, 99.40%)
This is going to be a long one, but it’s the #1 spot so I don’t really care. This first paragraph is going to be more rambly backstory than anything else, so if you don’t care about my life story feel free to skip ahead. Far and away my favorite game of the year, which is unfortunate because Three Houses would have also won in a landslide if I had played it last year when it released instead. I talked about it a little bit in my first yearly top 10 list with Xenoblade 2, but my history with Xenoblade is something I find interesting. I watched chuggaaconroy’s LP of Xenoblade as it was coming out back in 2014-2015. Despite enjoying the hell out of what I was seeing, eagerly waiting for 5pm to roll around for the next video directly from Episode 1 (something that despite enjoying chuggaaconroy before, during, and since his Xenoblade LP I was never and have never been as attached to one game), I never bought the game. At the time I was pretty much solely playing Zelda, Mario, Pokemon, Metroid, and Smash for games with the occasional random game in the mix. I had the game in my hands a couple times over the years but never followed through with it. Simple reasons like not wanting to pull out a Wii or just not wanting to pull the trigger on JRPGs. The release of Xenoblade 2 on Switch is one of the things that made me want my Switch (with the double punch of Metroid Prime 4 and Pokemon at E3 2017 being the nail in the coffin). I knew I wanted to broaden my horizons on game genres and franchises, so why not start with the sequel to a game I desperately wanted to play? Obviously, I fell in love with Xenoblade 2 and it kickstarted my love for JRPGs in general. Alongside the build-up to Xenoblade 2, I couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to get an HD remake or remaster of the original. Fixing the only flaw that it had in the eyes of many people. Every single Direct throughout 2018 and 2019 I kept waiting for that magical announcement. I put “Xenoblade HD” on every single Direct Bingo card despite never actually expecting it. So of course when that September 2019 Direct rolled around, with plenty of evidence in the weeks before that something was happening from MonolithSoft, my hype was at an all-time high… and the reveal had me in tears.
Xenoblade Chronicles is an amazing game, an amazing franchise, built around story, characters, combat, and large, open(ish?) worlds to explore. The original game on the Wii is exceptional in every category except for graphics, which the Definitive Edition has drastically improved. The characters are able to emote in ways that they could only attempt before and it gives a lot more depth to various cutscenes throughout the game. As far as the various categories, the game is just as amazing as I remembered it. The characters all fall into your typical stereotypes, but they are not defined by their stereotypes. They are all people and you are able to connect to them because of it. Characters like Reyn may fall into the childhood friend/brawn-before-brains stereotypes, but he also has plenty of moments where it is clear he is more than that. While some of the characters may not carry the same level of significance throughout the story or into the final chapters, they are all great characters. This is where the idea of European accents for Xenoblade 2 came from, as the original is full of them. If anyone played Xenoblade 2 and was put off by the dub, please give this dub a shot. Characters like Shulk bring chills with their delivery in scenes and I honestly believe that even if you absolutely hated every other voice actor in the game that Adam Howden’s work as Shulk still makes the dub the best way to experience it. The story is amazing with constant twists and turns and is something that I wish everyone would experience once in their lives. At roughly 50-70 hours long it is also plenty long enough with enough content to stretch you easily over the 100 hour mark if you choose to. The game has an action combat system based around various things depending on the character. Characters like Shulk combine an offensive and supportive role by positioning himself around enemies to gain additional effects on his Arts while also healing and defending the rest of the party. Reyn is your typical aggro-drawing tank character to let Shulk get in some big hits without drawing attention to himself. Others are based on summoning elementals to buff the party’s stats and dealing heavy damage. The party all have their unique playstyles that can lead to you finding your favorite out of them no matter how you like to play. Make sure to switch your party around and experiment with the other members, don’t just stick with the first 3. Another thing that MonolithSoft is amazing at; the world is beautiful. There are plenty of different environments including lush fields, dark caves, murky-turned-breathtaking swamps, and icy mountains. Moving around on the surface of the Bionis makes you really feel small. Of course the world isn’t the same if you don’t have the music to back it up, and Xenoblade’s soundtrack is nearly unrivaled (in my opinion). With a huge amount of tracks for various emotions and types of scenes, it’s a soundtrack that I have been listening to for about 5 or 6 years now.
In the end, Xenoblade DE is still only my #2 favorite game on Switch. Still beaten out by Xenoblade 2. There are a couple of reasons for that. I believe the one reason that beats them all out is that Xenoblade 2 will always be the game that introduced me to an entire genre, to my favorite genre, and likely what convinced me that broadening my horizons for games was a good idea in general. However I do also prefer the characters of Xenoblade 2 and find them to boost the game up just enough. While I also prefer the story of XC1 to XC2, I do not believe XC2 to be a weak story like so many others believe. Xenoblade DE is a game that I can’t stop recommending to anyone who listens. My friends across Discord and real life know that I don’t shut up about it, to the point that I’ve been successful in luring multiple people in and getting them hooked. If you’re a fan of amazing stories, characters, soundtracks, and breathtaking views, do yourself a favor and buy this game. It’s an experience unlike any other.
15. Ori and the Will of the Wisps (15+ hours, 96.46%)
14. Octopath Traveler (200+ hours, 100.00%)
13. Animal Crossing: New Horizons (370+ hours, 92.10%)
12. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX (55+ hours, 85.58%)
11. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (125+ hours, 95.87%)
10. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition (140+ hours, 86.76%)
9. Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (45+ hours, 90.37%)
8. Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Complete Edition (135+ hours, 88.34%)
7. Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country (55+ hours, 100.00%)
6. AI: The Somnium Files (30+ hours, 100.00%)
5. Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition (240+ hours, 98.85%)
4. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (235+ hours, 93.43%)
3. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (245+ hours, 97.23%)
2. Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (280+ hours, 99.40%)
1. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (935+ hours, 99.86%)
So there is my list for this year! I’d love to know what games you all played this year and what your favorites were. I think it’s a lot of fun to find out what games people enjoyed even if they didn’t release this year since maybe I find a new game to play out of it!