Hey Guardians!

I’ve been a long-time lurker on here, but I’ve been having so much fun with this build I created that I just couldn’t help but share it. This build uses one of my favorite exotics, Tommy’s Matchbook. I fell in love with this gun the moment it came out and have used it enough for my warlock to be considered a masochist. But as much as I love Tommy even, I must admit the gun has some serious flaws. The most obvious of these being self-damage (duh), and an abysmal reload speed. So, my goal was to solve these flaws while also creating a synergistic build of my favorite class (warlock) that could take on high level content. This is the result.
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Ok so what will you be able to accomplish with this build?
· You and your allies will be able to have a consistent character speed boost
· You and allies will have a 100 reload and boosted handling consistently
· You will have a consistent 50% damage reduction
· You will be able to heal yourself in large chunks on demand
· You will have boosted grenade damage and cooldown
· Your allies will receive boosted grenade cooldowns
· You will be able to stun overload champs
· Break barrier champs’ shields
· You will have a 30% modifier boost to your super damage (in our case chaos reach)
· And you will have the option to add and additional 25% damage modifier added to all your ability damage to frozen or slowed targets (pretty sure this includes your super haven’t tested yet)
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I know that seems like a lot but if you stick with me, I promise to break this build up into small bites to make this as simple and painless as possible. Still here? Dope let’s get started.

Subclass:

Starting things off with our subclass we are going middle tree Stormcaller. Most warlocks go the bottom tree void walker route and for good reason. Devour synergizes incredibly well with Tommy as it solves the self-damage problem pretty well. But we won’t be going this for a few reasons A. we have other more effective tools to solve the self-damage problem, B. it doesn’t address Tommy’s reload, and C. bungie unfortunately hates Nova Bomb and it simply can’t hang with some of the other super options warlocks have at their disposal with some of these new seasonal mods and exotic support we got. These and the reasons below are why we are going middle tree Stormcaller.

Pulsewave:

This is the big one. In bungie terms Pulsewave does this “being critically wounded triggers an energy wave that boosts yours and allies’ speed”. What that actually means is you and your allies get a plus 100 to your weapons reload stat, a pretty generous boost to weapon handling, and a speed boost that is comparable to killing wind, oh and all of these boosts last ten seconds. All for the low low price of being critically wounded (shields depleted) which we were going to do anyway thanks to Tommy.

Chaos Reach:

While Tommy is an add clearing machine it’s not great at burning through bosses or generating quick bursts of damage. Luckily, we have this monster of a super. One of the best damaging supers we Warlocks have at our disposable, the Kamehameha absolutely shreds bosses and majors. Plus, we got a few fun new tools to make it even better, more on that in the mods section.

Ionic Trace:

This is just gravy at this point. Ability regen on kills, easy, straightforward, always helpful. Not much more to say here, it’s great.

Grenade and Rift:

My recommendation here is the pulse nade, the consistent ticks of damage means overloads stay stunned for longer. However, if you want to just drop a ton of damage storm is also great (just be careful not to kill yourself with them). As for rift you gotta go healing. We take lots of damage with this build so it’s never a bad thing to have another source of healing on demand.
Now that we know what abilities we are working with let’s talk exotics and other weapons.

Tommy’s Matchbook:

This is the center piece, a beautiful 720 that when you hold down the trigger for 20 rounds ramps up to 99% more damage, you filthy animal! While ignition trigger is doing its thing, we take burn damage which we can reduce by hip firing. Thanks to the catalyst while we are being burned our health recovers much faster too. Something that Bungie doesn’t tell you is this thing’s in air and hipfire accuracy is nutty, but that’s old news for most of you.

Verity’s Brow:

While we are burning through targets with Tommy we are also charging up this exotic. The exotic perk death throws goes up every time you get an energy weapon kill and stacks up to five times speeding up the recharge rate of your grenade and boosting its damage. This plus ionic trace should keep your grenade topped off very often. Plus, every time you throw a grenade you also get to boost your fireteam members grenade recharge. For those of you keeping score, that’s a max reload buff, grenade recharge rate, and speed boost your giving your teammates. Who says warlocks can only play support with middle tree dawn?

Geomags (Alternative Option):

I feel like I’d have to turn in my warlock card if I didn’t mention this as an alternative to Verity’s. This thing is nutty and with the mods we are going to use to boost chaos reach later on it only gets more powerful. Wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go this route but I personal prefer the team aspect and utility of Verity’s.

Kinetic and Heavy weapons:

For your Kinetic slot you should be using a sniper, any sniper works but if you want my personal favorite for this build, I would use a Succession with recombination and reconstruction. This acts as a baby Izzy and is great for quickly swapping to and deleting majors and barrier champs. If you aren’t lucky enough to have one of those don’t worry any other kinetic sniper with perks focusing on single shot damage and auto reloading (pulse monitor is really good with this build too) will do just fine. As for your heavy slot this is really a personal preference thing. LMGs synergize with sustained charge, but swords and rockets are also super solid. I am mainly using my heavy as another way to take down big non boss targets, so I personally use my old Falling Guillotine (yes, I know this isn’t season of the arrivals. No, I don’t care).

Mods:

OK this is where things start to get a little complicated, so for simplicity sake I will be doing the mod break down armor piece by armor piece showing affinities and energy consumption and then writing a description for the mods used. This is the point where all the parts really start to come together and turn it from a concept to a full-fledged build. I’m going to go into this assuming you have at least some general knowledge about the charged with light system but if not do yourself a favor and find a guide on the basics. My personal recommendations are Fallout Plays’ and Ehroar’s guides, which you can find on their respective YouTube channels. With that disclaimer out of the way let’s dive in.

Helmet:

Affinity Solar
Ashes to Assets 3 cost (2x)
“Gain bonus super energy on grenade kills”
As we are a grenade-based build having a stack of A2A is super helpful for regening our super.
Taking charge 3 cost
“Become charged with light by picking up orbs of power”
Since Tommy can generate orbs of power off of multi Kills this is one of two ways we will get charged with light.
Minor Discipline 1 cost
Not necessary but a small boost to discipline can only help.
​

Arms:

Affinity Solar
Anti-Barrier sniper 6 cost
“Sniper rifles you are wielding fire shield-piercing rounds and stun barrier champions. Sniper rifles deal bonus damage against barrier champions”
Pretty straight forward. A tool to eliminate barrier champs (or that one phalanx that really deserved to get its head taken off)
Sustained Charge 4 cost
“Become charged with light by rapidly defeating combatants with auto rifles, trace rifles, or machine guns. Additional copies of this mod increase the time allowed between combatants that are defeated.”
Multikills, in this case three kills in rapid succession within roughly three seconds of each other, charge us with light. Since we are burning through adds with Tommy this is a reliable way to get charge with light from range. If you aren’t in a position to run in and grab an orb this will allow you to still charge up. You may wonder why run both sustained charge and taking charge? For me it’s more of a consistency thing. With this build you need to be charged with light pretty much the whole time and sustained charge provides a way for you to do that at range whereas taking charge allows you to leave orbs to pick up in a pinch when you can’t get kills or to guarantee that you end every fight charged with light and ready for the next engagement.

Chest:

Affinity Void
Stacks on Stacks 4 cost
“gain an extra stack of charged with light for every stack you gain. –10 recovery”
This is another ease of use and consistency thing, with this you have some room for error with how you go about your engagements and if you play it right you will always be able to use both Heal thyself and protective light which we will talk about soon.
Sniper Reserves 3 cost (x2)
Don’t think I need to explain why this is helpful. We use a sniper, so we want more ammo. You could also use this for your heavy weapon of choice, it’s up to you.

Legs:

Affinity Solar
Recuperation 1 cost (x2)
“replenishes health each time you pick up an orb of power”
This perk is hella underrated this doesn’t trigger regen which is great because Tommy would stop that almost immediately with its burn. Instead, this provides quick huge burst to your health (don’t have the exact numbers but trust me it substantial) further solidifying the playstyle of leaving orbs around as little healing and charge with light checkpoints.
Heal Thyself 4 cost
“while you are charged with light, grenade final blows heal you and consume one stack of charged with light”
Think of this as you oh shit button. Instant healing for when that orb is too far away, or a rift will take just too long to activate. This can be a crazy helpful tool for staying alive and while it isn’t the main star of the build its great for survivability and synergizes well with what we are trying to do. Note, your oh shit button does deal damage to you and can kill you if it hits you before it kills an enemy. Just to be safe make sure your targets are aren’t all up in your grill when you throw.
Recovery 4 cost
Needs no explanation, if recovery isn’t your jam pick a different stat, I just like it when all the numbers fit perfectly.

Class:

Affinity Void
Volatile Conduction 6 cost
“Grants bonus arc damage if cast while critically wounded. Lasts until the end of the super activation”
When bungie made this mod they were like Chaos reach is good, but it can be better. 30% better to be exact. While these are normally a pain in the ass to activate and often feel super clunky forcing you to let yourself get hit before activating your super, we have no such limitations as we are in an abusive relationship with our primary. This is some big boy damage especially when stacked with debuffs, geo mags, and Focusing Lens which I will mention at the end.
Surge Detonators 2 cost
“arc grenades disrupt combatants, stunning them, delaying ability regeneration and lowering combatant damage output”
Your oh shit button doesn’t only save your ass but stuns champs for long durations thanks to the continuous ticks of the pulse nade. Better yet this will be damage boosted too. Thanks to death throws often all it takes is one nade to just straight up kill a champ. Excellent utility for any content with the annoying teleporty boys.
Protective Light 2 cost
"While charged with light, you gain significant damage resistance against combatants when your shields are destroyed. This effect consumes all stacks of charged with light. The more stacks consumed, the longer the damage resistance lasts."
If Tommy is the star of this build than protective light is the glue that holds it all together. You gain a 50% damage reduction when in the red which allows us to just chill at low health no problem and gives us the time, we need to activate healing abilities. This last for 5 seconds on one charge and 10 with two but this will almost always be using two charges. This mod does so much for us, it lets us safely maximize the damage of Tommy, consistently apply pulse wave, and lets us be crazy tanky after we heal. You may think protective light clashes with heal thyself but since it can’t consume charges while the perk is up, we will still be able to utilize the nade healing as well as still having a backup five seconds after the fact if we take too long to get charged with light back.
Alternatively, you can swap Heal Thyself with sustained charge on your legs and replace sustained charge and your helmets solar affinity for protective light and a void affinity. This leaves room for Focusing Lens on your class item allowing you to sacrifice the ability to stun overloads and heal yourself on grenade kills with a 25% modifier buff to all your abilities on targets effected by stasis freeze or slow. This decision all comes down to team composition and activity. That being said you haven’t lived until you and your homie running stasis absolutely nuke a boss with the most powerful chaos reach super known to man.

Playstyle:

So, what does this build look like in action? Let me paint a picture for you. We lay into some ads with Tommy and get charged with light times two from a multikill, ignition trigger tics us down to the red and we get ten seconds of 50% damage reduction, a speed boost, and max reload. You use your newfound speed and damage reduction to run in and pick up the orb Tommy dropped from that same multikill and get sent back to like 80% health with 5 seconds left on your pulse wave and protective light timers and a fresh stack of charged with light x2 you burn through more adds with the rest of Tommy’s ammo and reload it in like a second. Repeat until you find the boss and nuke him with a chaos reach that is 30% more powerful. This damage increase is a modifier which means it can still stack with other modifiers, one buff, and a debuff for some absolutely crazy numbers.

TLDR:

Put these mods on your armor and use these weapons for a highly synergistic build that focuses on survivability with Tommy’s matchbook and middle tree Stormcaller.
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Helmet:
Affinity Solar
Ashes to Assets 3 cost (2x)
Taking charge 3 cost
charged with light.
Minor Discipline 1 cost
​
Arms:
Affinity Solar
Anti-Barrier sniper 6 cost
Sustained Charge 4 cost
​
Chest:
Affinity Void
Stacks on Stacks 4 cost
Sniper Reserves 3 cost (x2)
​
Legs:
Affinity Solar
Recuperation 1 cost (x2)
Heal Thyself 4 cost
Recovery 4 cost
​
Class:
Affinity Void
Volatile Conduction 6 cost
Surge Detonators 2 cost
Protective Light 2 cost
​
Exotics:
Tommy’s Matchbook
Verity’s Brow or Geomag
​

Conclusion:

And there you have it. This was definitely longer than I was expecting but hopefully not too hard to get through. If you made it to the end thanks for bearing with me and hopefully you have fun trying out this build or some variation of it in game. This is my first time ever posting something like this so if you have any suggestions or feedback please feel free to share. Likewise, if you have any other cool synergies and want to talk build crafting hit me up, the charged with light system is one of my favorite additions to this game and I am always trying to brainstorm my next build.
Edited to fix information regarding chaos reach dps and fixing my inability to spell.

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

Despite all of the kickback you are receiving for the games bugs, optimization, and lack of features... You have created an astonishingly beautiful world with a level of visual detail that is pretty much unmatched.
The actual gameplay? It's fine, honestly. Plenty of RPG customization options for your character, decent weapon variety. Barring the big bugs, you can play the game how you want. hacking is fun enough, melee is fun enough, stealth is fun enough. You truly do feel free to approach things how you want to the same degree as any other game that tries to offer you these options.
Sure, there isn't much in the way of open world police pursuits, killing sprees or any of the other 'sandbox' elements that players are accustomed to with games like GTA. Quite frankly, there doesn't have to be, in my opinion.
The game will get optimized. Bugs will get fixed. The foundation of a totally unforgettable gaming experience has been laid.
You've DONE all the heavy lifting, CDPR.
Now pepper in a huge amount of novelties. That's what have to do.
Make the arcade machines playable. Let us go and get a haircut. Let us actually sit down at a bar and drink, even if it doesn't do anything. Let us purchase items at the sex shops. Give us cosmetic slots. Let us dance on dancefloors. Let us gamble. Add fluff, and then add some more
None of these things require a large amount of resources at all to accomplish, comparatively to some of the other things you have managed to pull off. But, these are the things that make the world feel alive. We aren't talking huge features. Just 10-15 tiny things that really add up to making the world feel like there are things to do that aren't just the next mission.

General / QoL

• Dark Mode is now available as a setting and on by default. We also tied down the guy (who wrote the flashingly bright note about seizures) in a opthalmic speculum, in a dark room while opening and closing the said bright note for 3 hours.
• Light Mode uses grayish / genshin-impact-blue color scheme.
• Users can now map keys in settings.
• New user center setting : Allow Teyvat Times to publish my in-game alias (not username) and last 4 digits of my UID (When you set a world record of hunting fowl and etc.)
• Added setting for persistent aiming mode. If turned on, your character will try to get back to aiming mode even when you dash or you are knocked back.
• Going in and out of aiming mode is now much smoother. You can still dash, cast skills and still keep the cursor on. Inspired by Tombraider? Idk why I wrote this.
• When crafting an item and you run out of materials for it, the item selected stays in place and will not scroll all the way down.
• When choosing characters for the abyss, the preview button to see which enemies you will face is also there.
• When finishing an abyss floor, you can return to the abyss menu without ending the "run" to collect rewards or browse around.
• Fixed a bug with sucrose/xinqiu bonus materials when crafting.
• Fixed a bug with razor's c1 constellation not increasing his damage and not displaying a buff indicator.
• All buffs are now grouped/stacked by icon category, attack/defense/regen etc. Hovering the cursor in the grouped icon will display verbose info. (e.g. thrilling dragon tales, character talent, gouba pepper etc).
• Daily Login Bonus is permanent.
• Claim All and Repeat Buttons are now available in Blacksmith, Battlepass, Expeditions and the Like.
• VA/CV list is displayed instead of current selected voice language in character details. (e.g. if you go to a character screen, and have english voice language, you will only see english voice actor and you have to change language just to find out who the cn and jp voice actor is)
• Hide ui/hud setting and dedicated hotkey is added for creating fan-made cinematics.
• Unless it is an artifact or a weapon, an item previously recorded and consumed will no longer display as "new"
• Added shield bar on top of health bar
• Added party icon on the top right ui and a dedicated hotkey to switch parties
• Added hotkey to switch to your saved Comps 1 to 4
• Resin is now always visible at the top of UI (without needing to open up the map)
• Moved UID a bit further down by 2px so it doesn't overlap with the buttons
• Changed UID Opacity by 75% and has grayish text color, inspired by "windows is not activated"
• Added a space character on the launcher download text (e.g. "Downloading75%" into "Downloading 75%")
• Bonus damage from element-affected status (e.g. "deal 15% increased damage against cryo affected enemies" are enclosed in parentheses
• Expedition Slot Remembers Last Character Used
• Expedition Slot Remembers Last Hour Used
• All map objects are navigatable for consistent experience. and are not overridden by quests. You will always be directed towards the one you choose.
• Navigated Map Object Always Display Their Distance and Light Beacon (e.g. Leylines not having those)
• Added enemy weakspot zones with varying degrees (green,orange,red) in the adventurer's handbook, if you kill 150 of a certain enemy type. Humanoid types generally have the head as a weakspot.
• Fraction of Fraction of a bullet time effect and a red particle glows when you hit the weakest spot of an enemy.
• Reading and Clearing Story/Voice Lines syncs across all devices you own.
• Statues' Remaning Healing Energy now Visible on the Tower Itself. Dat Glowy thingies deplete when you use them.
• Statue's First Healing Tick Revives Fallen Characters by 10hp%. Second Healing Tick is Full Restoration or until Remaining Healing Energy Allows it.
• Critical strike Indicator
• Enemies in the handbook are dynamically arranged by type , then alphabetically. All hypostasis are lined up.
• All enemies are displayed in the handbook regardless of what region you currently are.
• Journal (J) is now binded to (F1), since this is where you look commissions for rather than the Adventurer Handbook (F1)
• Journal , Handbook and Archive are compressed and combined.
• We bought a time machine and went back to the time when we did the hypostasis event. The last challenge in the event is now a new hypostasis after the three old hypostasis.
• Andrius's Boss Fight is now properly a Trounce Domain, For consistency with other weekly boss.
• Changing a Team Member in your active roster won't override that slot in your saved team comp
• Active Roster and Saved Team Comps are now a seperate thing
• Selecting a Saved Team Comp will replace the Active Roster (so you can replace one member before "deploying")
• Clicking Deploy in a Saved Team Comps will immediately send you back to the game
• Switching Party Members is smoother than an oiled tits smooth, regardless of network latency. Especially in Single Player Mode.
• Resource and Player Position in the map has better visual clarity. (Imagine klee collecting wolf berries or philly mushrooms)
• Option to adjust map size , and resource/player icons.
• PC , map pin size collision reduced. If I clicked Taishan Mansion, I meant Taishan Mansion.
• Mora , Artifact Limits and etc always visible in inventory screen regardless of which tab you are on
• Blacksmith remembers the quantity of ores you refine
• Adventurer's Handbook remembers the last filter you used when browsing enemies (all, elite ,boss)
• Adventurer's Handbook points you the next enemy you are hunting (when you kill 1 ruin guard, you dont have to open handbook again to see the next one in the map)
• Adventure's Handbook knows ALL of the elite enemy locations. The list seem to be manually added instead of dynamic, possibly due to chest concealment similar mechanic. If you hunt ruin guards, I think the book only lists 4 of them in the whole map.

Gameplay

• Training dummy added near favonius hq. You have to do a story quest and spend resource to have it constructed.
• Enemies now have a difficulty rating. The higher the difficulty rating is, the higher character xp/gold they will provide. XP scales off your adventure rank level. Extra Large enemies have a guaranteed chance to drop 1-4* artifacts. They will respawn longer as a consequence. It doesn't make sense that a huge lawachurl and smol hilichurl both give 20xp.
• First and Second Dash now have different color indicators.
• If you used 2 dashes consecutively, a subtle glow/indicator pops around your character for when you are able to dash again. Inspired by Deadcells.
• Added Treasure Compass for Dragonspire.
• All excess anemoculus/geoculus/dendroculus and crimson agate can now be traded in the antiques shop.
• Treasure Compass will automatically change depending on what region you are on. If you don't have a treasure compass for that region, it will remain unchanged from what is the last equipped.
• Treasure Compass search radius is increased region wide. It will point the "nearest" treasure chest's direction. The color of the direction changes the farther you are.
• Treasure Compass will now consider puzzles as treasure, and display a different indicator. It won't tell you what steps to take to open it, though.
• Added a domain for gladiator and wanderer's troupe artifact sets. Artifact drop rate from world bosses are FURTHER reduced. Weekly boss artifact drops are unaffected.
• Prototypes will now drop at least once in the last weekly boss you face, if you are unlucky. The chance to acquire multiple prototypes within a week is unchanged. Drop rate is reduced consequently.
• World Boss Artifact Drop Rates are now visible in the adventurer's handbook.
• Prototype Drop Rates are now visible.
• Domain Artifact Drop Rates are now visible.
• 1-3* Weapons are now craftable. They will require a shit ton of ores and materials. Cold Steel for instance will require 200 pieces of mint.
• Added 6 new craftable weapons. Of course it will require prototypes you f2p piece of shit.
• Craftables, Shops and Loot have higher priority versus signboards and npc.
• Monsters and Enemies have higher priority (when attacking or casting skills) versus ores and flaming/freezing flowers and other resource objects.
• You can now equip up to 3 gadgets.
• New Action : long pressing a gadget opens up Gadget Wheel to switch gadgets without opening the inventory. Gadget goes into long cooldown.
• Domains now consider your condensed resin before saying you are out of resin.
• After completing a domain challenge, The start challenge object will respawn in the center of the arena. Game will no longer go into a loading screen. This is for the console peasants.
• When claiming domain challenge rewards, it also displays how much condensed resin you have (so you know you can still do 1 more, or gtfo) when it asks if you want to continue or leave
• Anemo Hypostasis will die if you manage to collect all the orbs, for a more consistent experience with other hypostasis.
• Weekly boss timers are now consistent. (Some have none , some at top, some at bottom)
• Dvalin's Mini Cutscene will hold your altitude (if you are gliding) when it triggers
• Childe's Mini Cutscene is now automatically skippable (named "skip when already viewed once" found in settings).
• Food is now sortable by type.
• When choosing a revival food, the icon sizes are reduced and displayed in a grid rather than a long line. When in single player mode it slows down time. Like witcher 3 or tomb raider.
• MRE can now hold all types of food, up to 3 slots.
• You can long click/hold the MRE button and switch the food it holds. Goes into long cooldown.
• Charged Longsword and Bow Attacks (for claymoreless comps) will now allow you to mine ores more effectively. This affects rock shield wall hilichurls as well.
• No one uses claymore charged attacks, even with stunned enemies. Claymore charged attacks now deal increasing damage the longer it was charged uninterrupted. You will get staggered and take more damage as a consequence. The last attack of a charged attack deals more damage and wipes half of the planet's population.
• Constellation can now be toggled on/off

Gacha / Shop

• The first cheapest crystal top up (60+60) has been buffed to (80+80) crystals. We realized it wasn't even enough for a single pull and we laughed until our sides hurt. As a tiny token of goodwill this will retroactively affect everyone who purchased this item for n amount of times the person has purchased this item.
• All in-game currencies (primo/fate/genesis/future except mora) are always displayed in the topright corner when wishing and shopping.
• Pity Counter. When it reaches 75 it glows like christmas.
• Gifting of purchase is now possible. In the case of chargebacks , the gifter gets banned. Gifts can only be sent after 60 days of purchase, and usable by the recipient after a week. Maximum of 1 gift per month.
• Gifter must have a track record of >= $20 of purchase within the last 3 months.
• Gifting is a sensitive topic. Chargeback scams fucks up game companies, banks and third party payment platforms.
• Purchase history and total is added to track expenses.
• Gambling addicition reminders when you rage spend. Also alerts a mhy employee when huge purchases are being made in error. It displays a huge red alert on the employees screen.

In Consideration

• Reworked Elemantal Mastery to also increase Elemental Skill Damage by 25% (base, some current/future characters might interact with less or more) of your total Elem Mastery. Consequently, Skill Damage from Attack Ratios are lowered. Think of ad/ap ratios in League of Legends.
• Character skills to deal compound damage of physical+element when using a weapon (e.g. diluc smash bouncing off pyro slimes, despite his big sword being sharp and shiny)

Items

• Wind Catcher Gadget now refills with anemo energy particles.
• Prototype Aminus/Archaic's proc cooldown refinement is restored. (Used to be 15/14/13/12/10)
• Boar Traps are now craftable and equippable as a gadget. You can leave it up to 48 hours to check if you caught something.
• Cast net are now craftable and equippable as a gadget. Can be used to catch multiple fish and crystal flies.
• Crab Traps , can be left in the wild for 48 hours and catches 3 crabs per trap.
• Inflatable balloon for safe swimming. Requires anemo slime materials.
• Portable towers no longer expire.
• Portable towers max deployed count is increased up to 5.
• Condensed Resin can now be used on World Boss
• Condensed Resin cap increased to 5.
• Artifact Inventory Limit increased to 5000.
• Weapon Cooldown Indicator displayed as status icon (sacrificial sword, archaic, etc)
• Seelie Companions give 1% passive bonus CharXP(Blue), CompanionXP(Purple), Mora(Gold)
• Crafting Table no longer consumable
• Portable Cooker no longer consumable (requires fuel , 1 fire stamen = 3 uses)
• Portable Warmer no longer consumable (requires fuel , 1 fire stamen = 3 uses)
• Items mined are ores
• Refined ores are ingots
• Option to refine Magical Crystal Chunk without resin, but with immensely increased cost and time

Coop

• You can see the general direction and how far an ally is like in pubg.
• In-game voice chat for random players in matchmaking

Battlepass / 12 Episode Anime

• Battlepass can now have excess points up to 3000xp , for the times when you do your reputation bounty and missions earlier before the next battlepass comes out.
• When a new Battlepass starts, it starts on mondays , so no mission gets left out. All excess days until the next new-battlepass-monday are dynamic and flexible.
• When using a condensed resin in a domain, it counts as 2 domains cleared in the Battlepass
• Cooking ingredients (sugar, bacon, cheese, etc) counts as cooking in the Battlepass
• You don't need to switch tabs in the battlepass when using claim all. Clicking claim all, claims all.
• New battlepass campaign for 12 episode anime. Milestones are displayed on website and forum. Sales earned are transparent in game and website. Inspired by dota 2 international.
• Percentage of battlepass campaign sales will go to anime funding.
• Having at least 1 season of anime puts mihoyo in the "mainstream" status in the leagues of Fate, Princess Connect, Grand Blue etc. It solidifies the IP.

Quests

• Option to abandon story quests (restart from scratch) to prevent blocking of coop
• Repeatable Quests Ideas below. Coop and matchmaking is enabled. 15~30 minutes long, walking pace. Not mandatory for daily activity/event/battlepass for people with little time to play. Gives worthwile rewards (3 pieces of adventurer's wit, 5k mora etc)
• Long escort caravan mission, from Mondstadt all the way to Liyue. From Springvale to Liyue. People and Caravan must survive. Enjoy the beautiful world of Teyvat, optional pit stops, coop chat/discord, region guard checkpoints and enemy ambush. Multiple client routes available. Go through dragonspire for a shorter, but more dangerous path. Get harassed by Fatui at borders. Board a ship and load the caravan. Get checked by Border Patrol for smuggled goods and diseases.
• Repeatable Town defense without towers. Defend the Town from hordes of invaders. Something fun with coop.
• Fatui and Friends Battle Royale. All npcs and doors disabled. You and the fatui bots duke it out. Healing only comes from special food that you pick up. Matchmaking enabled.
• Beach Defense. Prevent the Fatui from invading the coastline. Your friends rain arrows from starsnatch cliff.
• Beach to Mondstadt/Springvale goods escort services.

Elemental Reactions

• Vaporize's Steam deals aoe damage
• Overloads damage (electro->pyro) now deals x1.5 (pyro) damage
• Overloads damage (pyro->electro) now deals x2 (pyro) damage.
• Overload's knockback decreased significantly
• Superconduct's damage (electro->cryo) now deals 2x (cryo) damage
• Superconduct's damage (cryo->electro) now deals 1.5x (cryo) damage
• Superconduct's negative armor debuff is moved to Melt
• Melt gains the negative armor debuff due to the sudden temperature change, making surfaces brittle.
• Melt damage consequently reduced. (pyro->hydro) at x1.4% , (hydro->pyro) at x1.8%
• Geo New Reaction : Smoldering Rock or something (pyro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.3 (pyro damage) on top of crystallize
• Geo New Reaction : Mud or something (hydro->geo)(geo->hydro) deals x0.1 (geo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy movement
• Geo New Reaction : Snow or something (hydro->geo)(reverse not applicable) deals x0.2 (cryo damage) on top of crystallize, slows enemy attack speed
• Geo New Reaction : Seeds or something (dendro->geo) deals x0.1 (dendro damage) on top of crystallize, restores 3% of your hp. Or entangle. Prevents enemy movement (can still attacc and cast spells)

Enemies

• Enemies inside domains and abyss have their return-to-spawn-point-then-regenerate-to-full-health disabled.
• Enemy AI a bit smarter. Those with mobility skills (whopper, smol geovishap, cycin mages) won't follow you to drown in the water. The game will not check if you are wet , but if you are in a swimming state.
• Enemies attack cycle improve. Fixed bug when enemies stop attacking. Baedou Problems.
• Hydro Abyss Mage's and Hydro Fatui Gunner's Hydro Barrier now takes the same damage rate/ratio from opposing elements (cryo,electro) for consistency.
• Hydro barrier new opposing element : Geo. It makes it harder to maintain the water shield due to the mud soaking up the water and adding weight.
• Boss Childe's Spirit Whale Attack generates water in the sides of the arena, pushing you towards the center. You must have enough stamina to keep dashing to the sides before he does this, or you will have to perfectly dodge the spirit whale attack.
• Hydro SamaChurl now heals at a rate of +300/HoT per AR Milestone instead of percentage. This is for when you are hunting a LawaChurl Bounty that is near dead and healed to full health in 3 seconds. Having a fixed amount of healing ensures that it is big enough for the intended smaller enemies and portionally good enough for large enemies. The other option is to use different healing ratios for small and large enemies.
• Queen of Pain , I mean Cycin Mages have a stagger window when they are about to cast their almost-undispellable shield
• Zed , I mean Shadow Fatui Agent makes use of his shadows to dodge your attack sometimes.
• Smol Geo Vishap now drops less geo shields
• Smol Geo Vishap now uses his rolling attack near you, not 150m away from you.
• Smol Geo Vishap now burrows a bit less frequently
• Ruin Hunter doesn't stay in the air up and raining artillery forever , in consideration of bowless comps
• Fatui Cryo and Hydro Gunner Turn Rate Reduced by 10% when on Spray Mode.
• Primo GeoVishap now has a tired/exhausted animation, instead of standing still and looking at you and what life could have been for 10 seconds.
• Primo GeoVishap spin attack now has a 0.2 dodge window (previously none) and Spin Radius Decreased by 100m.

Characters

• Dvalin's Cutscene when you dispel his barrier is removed and much smoother. He just falls in place and no clipping.
• Character's "Main Stat" is now visible in attributes. Previously you can only know it when ascending or when using google, or if you really have a big brain.
• All characters passive talents are now combat related.
• All characters now have their own cooking/exploration/crafting/smithing talents. It is possible not to have OR have multiple talents in each category. We get it , everyone can taste what a good gravy is, but not everyone can make a good gravy.

Ayaka

• Alternate sprint binded to a different hotkey.
• Yes I came from the future.

Albedo

• Elevator can be activated to go up and down by using the F key.
• C2 stack counter / indicator via particles (think of razor geo sigils)
• C4 plunged attack covers albedo's sword in geo energy (like noelle, but smol)
• C6 crystallize shield has a different shape (leaf)

Amber

• Increased ultimate radius by a tiny bit.
• Allow targeting of ulimate by holding the ultimate button.
• If baron bunny is present in the ultimate radius, it will absorb all pyro damage and deal it as bonus damage when it blows up.
• If baron bunny was "charged" with pyro rain and hit with a C2 charged shot, it will trigger a micheal bay explosion animation.

Barbara

• Restored Barbara's Energetic Voice Lines
• New Lines sold seperately as Dark Barbara™ , comes with a Dark Dress
• C6 Revive indicator is now visible as a buff.
• C4 now generates flying energy particles instead of instantly regaining energy. Mind you that this is a fucking nerf to this piece of shit healer that freezes you. It's just that there's no flying particles when you use this hero.

Beidou

• Casting the elemental skill applies a strong taunt and re-initializes enemies attack loop.
• Bullet Time effect added when triggering a perfect counter, when playing in single player mode.
• The ultimate's chain lightning deals tiny spark damage if it didn't jump.
• C2 chain lightning has a different color.
• C4 buff is triggered when you do a perfect counter (Taking damage to activate a skill promotes bad gameplay)
• C4 perfect counter grants the maximum damage bonus
• C4 shield has a different color.
• C6 has aura on the ground (inspired by Dota 2's Necrophos , but purple)

Bennet

• C6 Ultimate pyro infusion just adds pyro damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into pyro.
• C6 Ultimate restores up to 100% hp.

Childe

• Improved manly posture when in aiming mode
• C4 Riptide slash and flash uses different coloparticles/animation
• C6 has an indicator when it works and when it is available

Chongyun

• Cryo Field's Cryo infusion just adds cryo damage to your attacks, and won't convert them fully into cryo.

Diluc

• What seriously? You really want more?
• Fuck this guy in particular
• Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
• C6 his flames has some bluish tint

Diona

• Fixed shield duration bug and increased by additional 1.1 seconds per claw.
• Shield ratio based off max hp increased by 10%
• C2 reduces skill cooldown by -2 seonds (press) and -4 (hold). The coop shield is added by default out of the box. Anything coop should not be locked behind a paywall because it will hurt the game and fanbase.
• C4 has been reworked to grant normal and aimed uncharged shots 25% chance to deal charged attack shots.
• C6 radius is increased and uses a different color.

Fischl

• Ultimate now deals tiny bit of damage per 0.2 seconds tick when making contact with enemies (aside from getting hit by lightning once)
• Ultimate can fly/pass through thorn walls. I'm looking at you Dendro Samachurl.
• Shadow Raven Let Night F---!!!
• C4 Ultimate hp restored now scales off damage dealt by the ult.

Ganyu

• holding the elemental skill allows you to aim and won't make you backdash
• C4 Freezing Field changes color intensity per damage increase
• C6 free frost charged arrow now works with normal unaimed attacks.
• C6 uses a different particle color. Sometime it turns into a bazooka.

Jean

• Reduced Increased swaying of boobs by a tiny amount while holding the skill. You can kinda feel them slapping against your face. You can almost describe their softness and warmth in a minimum of 10 pages apart from you going sommelier describing how deep her sweat tastes like.
• Jean's Charged Attack Launch Height is too damn high that you cant even hit the enemy, so - Reworked Jean's Charged Attack : Holding the attack button launches the enemy in the air. If you keep holding it down you will perform 3 slashes in the air. If you let go early you will stay on the ground.
• Base Attack Increased by +5
• Jean can now pick up the slimes dropped by enemies and use it against them for a bighead move
• Ultimate radius is increased
• Ultimate Wall Mechanic Reversed. Enemies are now trapped inside. When you use your skill (usually to regain energy) you can air-wall slam them. Block Projectiles from outside.
• If any of you actually played jean support, a normal person would use ult to heal, cast skill to regain energy, then switch back to other characters. It doesn't make fucking sense to push them outside your wind arena because you want to fight inside the swirl/healing zone.
• Ultimate swirls every 0.2 seconds , depending on what elements are inside. Field Changes Color Each Time Like a Disco Ball
• Ultimate now slowly succs enemies to the center(without lifting them up)
• Ultimate Damage is consequently reduced.
• C1 Uses a different colored windblast
• C2 Buff Indicator
• C4 uses a different color wind field
• C6 Ultimate is now an aura and moves with you. To break away from "buffed area" convention.
• C6 Ultimate will get you to keep the windsaber for the ult's duration
• C6 Shield Buff Indicator via Particle and Status Icon

Kaeya

• Base attack incresed by 5
• Elemental Skill (Hold) Sprays Ice , think of Igni but Ice in Witcher 3 or DND's Burning Hands
• C2 Icicles light up when you defeat an enemy indicating that it really works
• C4 Barrier is of different shape
• C6 uses a different icicle particle for bling purposes

Keqing

• Aiming mode feels a lot smoother. You can aim while moving and cursor immediately shows and the kungfu pose is only done when throwing the stilleto.
• When in single player mode, casting your ultimate produces a bullet time effect.
• C4 Buff Indicator
• C6 Description is confusing as fuck.
• C6 Buff indicator
• C6 Makes your sword light up like a lightsaber.

Klee

• Imroved Torch/Bonfire/Campfire and the likes Lockon (if there's any to begin with)
• Throwing Jumpty Dumpty provides 0.1s iframe during her spin
• Ult is now no longer greedy. Pyro satellites remain when you switch characters, making our lovable klee open up for support options. Child support.
• C4 is now manually triggered, Pressing q again will make her explode, bigger damage based off remaining duration. less duration left, less damage.
• C6 klee uses different bombs

Lisa

• A lingerie shop is opened in Mondstadt to change her pantsu, socks and garter belt style and colors. Black Leather Tight Suit™ Sold Seperately.
• Option to wear glasses as a Librarian added.
• Climbing voice volume is re-mastered in asmr microphone, in all languages.
• Requires "i am of legal age" consent in the user center
• Elemental skill (press) aoe slightly increased.
• Base attack increased by 15.

Mona

• Alternate dash is now binded to alt key.
• Hydro Puppet now deals half damage upon cast and half damage upon explosion.
• C6 normal attacks use a different attack animation.

MC (Anemo)

• Palm vortex can be casted in midair to break your fall (but not propel you up)

MC (Geo)

• When you overlap geo boulders (aimed mode) it will trigger the geo explosion of the older rock, then replace it with a new one

Ningguang

• Holding the skill button surrounds her in mini jade screens , unable to perform any action until it is released or ends. Useful for cinematic stuff. Imagine tanking childe's whale attack. Or someone wants to recreate triple rashomon scene.
• C6 has a chance to use different attack animation.
• C6 star jade now resembles a primo gem.

Noelle

• Elemental Sword Duration Indicator added
• C1 heals have a special effect and voice line when conditions are met.
• C2 upgrade uses a different charged attack animation.
• C4 uses a different barrier color
• C6 upgrade uses different ult (possibly red with the same hue as her skirt) color.

Qiqi

• C2 reworked as -15% attack debuff
• C4 reworked as -20% elemental resistance debuff
• C6 cooldown/availability indicator.
• C6 has a different bling/color

Razor

• Transformation Duration Indicator added
• C1 increased damage now really works
• C1 now has a buff indicator that it really works
• C2 now has a special crit indicator
• C4 armor shred now has a (claw mark) armor shred indicator that it really works
• C4 (hold) has increased damage so it doesn't feel left out. It also has electro explosions similar to when you mine an electric ore as a special effect to indicate that you are C4 and have a big PP.
• C6 covers your sword with electricity (like diluc) when it is charged and ready
• Yes I play razor a lot.

Sucrose

• Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
• Improved lock on when blowing off dandelion flowers. Idk how she keeps missing them even at point blank range, Hell , at any given range.
• C1 if you overlap the wind nukes the second one will be a 0.1s delay then it will go off with a slightly bigger radius
• C2 ult has a different color
• C4 has an indicator that it works
• C6 buff indicator

Venti

• Wind current generated by skill (hold) allows him to fall slower without gliding, and allows him to shoot wind lasers. Ehe
• C2 Charged Shot produces a bullet time effect when shot at point blank or if all 3 arrows hit a single enemy. Sometimes he draws the holy lyre and it transforms into a primitive shotgun.
• C4 buff indicator.
• C6 uses different vacuum color

Xiangling

• Ultimate deals additional damage when cast at point blank because you get stab and bonk while she is twirling her spear.
• C2 last attack leaves a flaming trail special effect (inspired by kyo or iori from king of fighters)
• C6 upon cast, Xianling automatically does a speed-up full normal attack combo and then releases the pyronado normally (while covered in flames or some shit). If you are in single player mode and there are no other enemies within 150 radius the ult will cause the screen to black out, like in legend of legaia.
• C6 during the ultimate if it contacts with gouba's flames it produces micheal bay effects while raining carpet bombs and shit.
• Yes flat is justice.

Xingqiu

• Floating Swords Duration added
• Fixed crafting bug not producing any bonus when using large quantities (say 100+)
• C4 Allows you to hold the elemental skill for double backflips (inspired by law from tekken) cooldown is 1 month.
• C4 Elem Skill leaves a faint rainbow (when ulted)
• C6 Swords emit faint rainbow color. Rainbow power motherf-

Xinyan

• Hitting large enemies counts as 2 enemies.
• C1 buff indicator
• C2's level 3 shield has some bluish flames
• C6 charged attack uses a diffent attack animation or has an indicator that it works

Xiao

• Transformation Duration Indicator added
• C2 now leaves a trail of anemo energy that deals tiny bit of damage , trail lasts for 1 second and deals at 0.2s intervals.
• C6 plunge attack counts large enemies as 2.
• C6 plunge-attack-no-cooldown-empowered-dashes uses a different particle color and produces a bullet time effect when used for the 3rd time onwards. useful for cinematic purposes
• C6 during the bullet time you can sneak in a normal attack once per dash
• Bullet time is always disabled in multiplayer

Zhongli

• Increased pillar aoe by a tiny bit
• Generates energy particles per pulse, maximum of 1 enemy per pillar
• Base attack increased by 5
• Travelers can redeem promo code "WHOSYOURDADDY" for additional +5 damage, regardless if they have the hero or not.
• Attack ratios increased by 3% per attack category.
• C1 has a slightly bigger dong eherm statue
• C4 Chaos Meteor errrr I mean Order Meteor has a different rock color
• C6 shield uses a different color , come on you get the drift already.
• C6 Meteor is affected by the element of the barrier you are wearing. The element is dealt as secondary damage, primary damage is still geo. (flaming space rock?)

Why different coloparticles/animation when you have C1-C6 upgrade?

It makes whales feels special, and it gives F2P players something to aspire for. It makes you want to spend with all the bling. Particle recolor is easy peasy and can be deployed within minutes. Attack animations on the other hand are time consuming. It almost always put smile in people's faces when a whale shows up in a ferrari. "Dude check this out a C6 GeoDaddy joined my domain run. Look at the size of his statue. Oh my what a BIG meteor."

Why are you doing this?

It's just for my amusement. I'm still adding random thoughts now that 1.3 has launched. I don't care if nothing gets implemented. I would nut hard in my shorts with QoL and alleged bug/bugfixes mentioned in this post more than anything.

Afterword

Leave your thoughts below. Sorry and not sorry for the broken engrish , feel free to copy and paste whatever, use it wherever idc as long as it doesn't annoy or harm someone. Translate it in your language etc. No credits needed etc. Let your mind flow

After-Afterword

• Thanks for the awards and all kinds of reception
• You guys are awesome and insane that's a shit load of awards thank you.

EDIT: Since I already wrote about it in the comments, I added a section about thieving skills point distribution.
EDIT2: added some more thoughts about how much more damage we can do with a Time Trap vs a Spike Trap due to how probability works with the Spike Trap's 20d6 vs our maxed damage strategy for benefitting from Time Trap.
First things first, this is the Enhanced Edition. It's what most people are playing and for good reason, so feel free to stop reading if that bothers you.
Second, aside from convenience stuff (like tweaks anthology's bottomless bag of holding mod), the only mod I use is SCS with pretty much everything maxed except without the "Tactical Challenges" (cause I just find them tactics-narrowing and, consequently, boring. I like the original SCS philosophy which is to just enhance the game's AI with few actual statistical/ability changes). If you like that option, ok, good for you. I did a few playthroughs with them back in the day, but didn't care for it too much.
Third, I just finished a playthrough of Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal (didn't feel like playing BG1/SoD this time around) with a Half-Orc Assassin, so that's what I'm gonna be focusing on, especially cause most people's complaints of single class thieves pertain to Throne of Bhaal.
With that said, let's get to it (feel free to skip certain sections, of course, it's a huge post):
THIEVING SKILLS POINT DISTRIBUTION (just copy and pasted it from my comment below, I didn't talk about it before cause it's too basic, but maybe some newbies might be reading this)
-There are several potions/equipment that increase your thieving skills, so you don't need to max out pickpocket, open locks or find traps. Plus, every point in dexterity increases every thieving skill except detect illusions by 5 points and you can increase dex permanently (eg tome) and temporarily (eg draw upon holy might).
-95 is enough to open every lock and find every trap in the trilogy. But if you can reach 25 str temporarily that gets you the equivalent of 85 open lock through bashing.
-You don't need much pickpocket unless you wanna steal from shops often, cause otherwise you can just buff it temporarily whenever you need it.
-Hide and move silently max out at 200 each, but 100 on one of them is reasonable enough to just hide outside of combat (remember you can use quick load to speed up your hide attempts outside of combat). 100 in both is enough to max out in dark areas (lighter areas and being outside during the day give you penalties). If you wanna run+hide constantly put more into it earlier. Or, if you're playing a shadowdancer you need as much of this as possible right away.
-Detect illusions can't be buffed so get it to 100, but you don't need it too much in bg1 cause there aren't many invisible/hidden enemies.
-Set traps should be at 100 for convenience, but you can live with a lower number if you only trap outside of combat and don't mind reloading. It's absolutely essential to max out if you wanna trap during combat (by running away first ofc otherwise you can't use it).
All in all, I just get some good hide/set traps/detect illusion early in soa and then start to minmax. Bg1 is really kit/strategy dependent but I ignore open lock/find traps for most of it (unlocking/disabling doesn't even get you much xp in bg1, why bother? Just take traps and bash locks unless doing no reload).
KITS
-Assassin: fantastic kit. Poison is a great buff (especially vs spellcasters, but not just that) with decent duration (5 rounds) that you can reapply a ton of times. That +1 to hit comes in super handy for thieves (who get worse thac0 progression than a cleric) and the +1 to damage actually makes a substantial difference when you consider it factors into backstabs. Every +1 damage (that factors into the backstab formula, so no Strength bonuses) means 7 extra damage on a single backstab or 63 extra damage in a single round of Assassination with 9 Attacks per Round (APR). And, of course, we get that sweet sweet x7 backstab, meaning Assassination can do MONSTROUS damage (easily over ~1000+ in a single round with 9APR).
-Bounty Hunter: also great, though it's been a while since I've played a solo one to judge it properly. Being able to throw the special traps and have them explode in a fireball-sized area is great and the Maze traps are underrated (they ignore magic resistance and there's no save!), cause anything with under 18 Intelligence (most enemies, pretty much) and not immune to maze (again, the vast majority of enemies, even dragons/demons are vulnerable) gets caught up for at least 2d4 (probably more) leaving you with a great opportunity to place traps for when they come back. Plus, the smarter folks come back sooner, meaning spellcasters will probably be left alone and take the brunt of the traps (whose damage can pretty much only be stopped by the exact physical/elemental-damage resistance).
-Swashbuckler: unnecessarily fighter-like IMO. As we'll see later, thieves can be quite the fighters if geared properly and it's rare that they're lacking either thac0 or AC. But since Swashbucklers get ridiculous amounts of thac0/AC by the end of the game it means you can get a little bit more creative with your gearing and access to Whirlwind is nice, I suppose. Not getting backstabs/access to Assassination is a huge bummer though.
Shadowdancer: super fun kit, but they miss out on some of the best parts of thieves: high level abilities (HLAs). Shadow Form (essentially a stronger, but short-lasting Hardiness+Improved Invisibility) is great, Shadow Twin is simply unnecessary (it's a Simulacrum, cool, but there are already two other sources of Simulacrum...) and their Shadow Maze is crappy compared to the Bounty Hunter's maze trap cause it doesn't ignore magic resistance, there's a save (at -4, admittedly) AND it only affects a single opponent, not an area. But the worst part is that they don't get the amazing thief traps and their Assassination is super nerfed with that x4 multiplier. So why are they still good? Because they still get Use Any Item (UAI), shadowstep lets you dispel illusions comfortably in the chaos of battle and give you time for your hide cooldown to reset, but, most importantly, hide-in-plain-sight allows for a cheeky combo:
Invisibility (not hiding) -> Backstab -> Insta-cast ability (eg use a wand if you're a single class SD or use a 0 casting time spell if you're a dual SD/Mage or Cleric) -> Hide (that's not on cooldown cause we weren't hidden to begin with, we were invisible before).
That means you can constantly do a backstab + use a wand or cast a spell (or a triggesequencer!) and hide before the enemy can do anything. So the more sources of invisibility you have, the more you can do in combat without ever being engaged! If the enemy doesn't just straight up ignore invisibility you can pretty much play without armor if you want (if your hide/move silently are good, ofc).
RACES
Human: good for dualing, of course. Swashbucklers and Shadowdancers are the best duals IMO, unless you're willing to dual crazy late for the x7 Assassin backstab (you can do it if you're playing solo, but I wouldn't recommend it in a full party with six-way shared XP).
Elf: -1 con makes no difference, but the +1 to dex is nice, cause we can easily get to 21 DEX (with 2 out of the 3 sources of +1 dex: BG1 Tome, the Machine of Lum and the Deck of Many Things) for that extra -1 AC and each point in dex gives us +5 to thieving skills (except Detect Illusions), but none of that is necessary cause we can still reach 21 DEX starting with 18 DEX and by the end of the game we'll have all the skills pretty much maxed out anyway. 90% charm immunity is nice though, I guess.
Half-Orc: my preferred choice. Why? Thieves need more thac0, especially against late-late game bosses that are immune to Time Traps/Time Stop (meaning we can't just auto-hit them) and having more thac0 when you're a class with poor thac0 progression is always nice. Plus, you get more damage. In BG1 alone it's a huge difference cause jumping from 18 to 19 STR means -2 bonus to thac0 and +7 to damage. By the end of the game we can have natural 23 Strength, which is more than any girdle can give us.
Other races: shorties are cool for saving throws, but thieves already get enough with all the saving throw-enhancing gear that UAI lets them use and with Greater Evasion that lowers them by a further 3 points. And we miss out on, again, what we need the most: thac0! The difference between maxing out at 22 and 23 is another extra point!
GEAR
Use Any Item is one of the main strengths of thieves, so, yes, talking about items is also talking about thieves. You can't ignore this.
-Weapons: "easy, you're an assassin, just get the Celestial Fury or the Staff of the Ram for great backstab damage!" Sure, if all you want to do a single powerful backstab to one-shot a single powerful enemy that's fine, go for those. But after getting HLAs what you want is Assassination potential and those weapons, surprisingly, aren't the best for that. Plus, you probably want a thief that can actually fight well in battles even after backstabbing and without needing to go away to hide again or whatever (though that's an option, of course).
So what's the big bad weapon combo? How do we turn out non-Fighter Thief into a fighting Thief? We need more APR. Belm+Kundane then? That'll get 1 base attack, 1 offhand attack, plus 2 main hand attacks. Double that if you're Improved Hasted, so 8 APR. Cool, but we can do a lot better than that.
Both Belm and Kundane are +2 weapons, meaning a bunch of powerful enemies will be immune to them. +3 is the real deal (only Demiliches, the Lesser Demon Lord from the eggs main quest, the Ravager, the Fallen Solar at the final battle and Watcher's Keep's Aurumach Rilmani are immune to +3 weapons). Besides, Kundane only has 1d6 base damage, meaning it weakens our Assassination potential.
The answer? Throwing daggers, motherf****! That's right! Throwing daggers ain't just for throwing!! Both the Boomerang Dagger +2 (which you can easily pickpocket right at the start of SoA) and the Firetooth +3 (available in Ust Nasha) give you an extra attack! It's just that you can't use them in the offhand, but that doesn't matter cause they're both great! Both do a respectable 2d4 damage (better than a long sword's 1d8!) and the Firetooh is a +3, plus it does 1d2 extra fire damage for some convenient troll killing and stoneskin harassing! So you use either of those in the main hand and Belm in the offhand, but if the enemy is immune to backstabs or immune to +2 weapons you switch Belm out to the Scarlet Ninja-to +3 (available in Joluv's shop at the Copper Coronet and useable by thieves with UAI!). Dope! 8 APR with a great +3 main hand weapon! As for the 9 APR... Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization, which you can use after getting UAI. That's an extra 1/2 APR normally, but a full 1 extra APR with Improved Haste.
Other great weapons you should keep in mind are the usual (Mace of Disruption/Daystar against undead, that one staff that instakills golems you get in Ust Nasha... But there's more that people don't often talk about, like:
-The Blackmist Halberd you get from giving the eggs to the Lesser Demon Lord in Ust Nasha, which is great in a secondary weapon slot cause it lets us cast area blindness (blindness is one of the best spells in the game) once per day.
-The Sling of Arvoreen that stuns in an area for 3 rounds (auto-hits for our 9APR thief!).
-The Darkfire Bow available in ToB for its long-lasting (23 rounds) improved haste cast.
-The Answerer in ToB if you really want to worse the enemy's AC (I didn't need to resort to it once in my playthrough, but you can use it if you want).
EDIT: as mentioned by semiticgod, "The Staff of the Magi can royally screw with Sendai in ToB. Unlike some other ToB enemies, the drow cannot see through invisibility, though SCS Sendai and company will use divination spells (the Cloak of Non Detection can preserve the staff's invisibility despite those spells)". I totally forgot to fight the Twisted Rune before going to ToB, so I screwed myself there.
-+4 weapons for the few +3 immune enemies (which I only used to finish off the Aurumach Rilmani in Watcher's Keep and kill Demiliches, I'll talk about how to handle the Ravager later).
ArmoAccessories:
-Wands, you know them, you love them, you can backstab (or just attack) and then immediately cast them. I barely used them in my playthrough, but they're excellent, of course, especially the wands of paralyzation and spell striking.
-Invisibility stuff. Obvious use.
-Like I said before, Gauntlets of Extraordinary Specialization (SoA) to get to 9APR.
-Headband of the Devout (ToB): blesses you (-1 thac0 and +1 backstab-effective damage!) and lets you cast Righteous Magic (+3 Strength and MAXED OUT DAMAGE) once per day lasting 1 turn aka 10 rounds!!! GET THIS!! Normally only monks can use it and it's available in Rasaad's quest, along with two other nice items (a cloak that gets you -2 stackable AC and Protection from Magical Energy and Boots with 3x/day Shadow Door).
-Improved Haste (IH) gear:
a) (SoA) Early on you can use the Ring of Gaxx to get 1 round of undispellable (hardly necessary, but I just thought I'd let people know about this if they didn't) IH 3x/day, it technically amounts to 5 rounds, not 3, cause each of the 3 casts lasts for 10 secs (a round is 6 secs), so you might end up doing more than 1 round's worth of attacks (it's hard to tell).
b) (SoA) Bracers of Blinding Strike in the Underdark for 20 secs (a little over 3 rounds) of IH. You can equip it, cast it and equip something else.
c) (SoA) Scrolls of Improved Haste, if you really want to have a longer lasting IH in SoA. There are quite a few and you won't need them in ToB, so use them freely. If you want, you can even waste a scroll of wish for it...
d) (modded SoA or ToB) If you're using the mod (was it Tweaks Anthology?) that lets Cromwell forge the ToB recipes that you can already get in SoA then you can get the Improved Cloak of Protection +2 for those sweet 23 rounds of IH.
e) (ToB) Amulet of Cheetah Speed, also 23 rounds of IH.
-Cloak of Unerring Strikes (SoA) and later Montolio's Cloak (ToB) for extra offhand thac0 and, in Montolio's case also -1 save and AC bonus.
-White Dragon Scale (SoA): best base AC out of any armor in game, available early in SoA, doesn't interfere with thieving skills, lets you cast Cone of Cold, protects from Cold (great for Melissan battle along with the Boots of the North)... The only problem is that it won't let you use the Improved Cloak of Protection +2, so when you get it switch to the Robe of the Apprenti (AC3) until you get another source of long-lasting IH. Or switch it out to cast IH with the cloak before battle and then put it back on.
-Thieves' Hood (SoA): you're a thief, backstabs can hurt a lot in ToB, this makes you immune. Poison immunity is great too, but you got the Ring of Gaxx (which I'll cover with other regen gear) for that.
-Paws of the Cheetah (SoA): along with (improved) haste this lets you run and hide or, better yet, run and place a Time Trap or Spike Trap! Essential!!
-Helm of Balduran: we need that thac0 early on, boys and girls. Some HP and AC is nice too.
-The Visage (SoA, from Dorn's quest): -1 bonus to saves and thac0, protects against crits (I just noticed this lol), can dominate once and has an acid breath attack and a big ol' list of immunities (fear, charm, feeblemind, confusion). What's not to love? It just takes a while to get cause you gotta finish Dorn's quest. It's dope, but after your saves get really low (naturally protecting you against those status as well) you get better stuff.
-Book of Infinite Spells (SoA): Spell Turning! Underrated item and spell. You don't get a lot of spell protections as a non-spellcaster, especially the rechargeable kind, so this is one of the best.
-Vhailor's Helm: more traps! More Assassinations! I actually forgot about using this until the literal final battle lol, but it's great.
-Heart of the Mountain (SoA): available in Spellhold and normally only useable by Shamans, this gets you -2 AC and stacks with enchanted armorings! Excellent before ToB.
-Amulet of the Master Harper (ToB): -3 bonus to AC, even better! Silence immunity and thieving skill bonuses aren't bad either.
-Blessed Bracers (modded SoA Cromwell or ToB): resurrection heals you completely (at least until 2.6 comes! Though the text says it fully heals, so maybe it'll still after 2.6?) and there's some Cure Wounds too if you want. You're better off using a Rod of Resurrection cause it casts faster, but sometimes you just don't feel like using non-rechargeable item charges. Put it on, use it and switch out.
-Nymph Cloak: cheesyyyyy, so cheeeeesy, but it's the kind of cheese I love. I tried not using it too much though, I just used it against a few Rakshasa early on and against Aesgareth's party.
-Regen gear (I'll explain why this is great for thieves next): Ring of Regeneration, Ring of Gaxx (-2 AC and poison/disease immunity is great too ofc), Wong Fei's Ioun Stone (which also nets you some HP and -1 AC).
REGENERATION
"What? Why are you talking about regeneration? What does that have to do with thieves?"
Alchemy = unlimited Potions of Regeneration that stack with all of the regen geaspells (all sources of regen stack INCLUDING DRINKING MULTIPLE POTIONS OF REGENERATION and I just discovered this last part after finishing the game). And Potions of Regeneration heal 2HP/round and last for 3 turns aka 30 rounds!
Although Potions of Regen aren't super rare, they're also not available in ample supply, especially if you don't know where to find them all to begin with. But high level thieves can spam them freely cause they can always get more with Alchemy.
So, if you're not a believe in regeneration like I am, let's explain how good it can be (this is the calculation without abusing potion of regen stacking, so only using one):
-Ring of Regen 1HP/round (aka 1HP/6 seconds)
-Ring of Gaxx 2/round
-Wong Fei's Ioun Stone 1HP/Round
-Potion of Regeneration 2HP/round
=
6HP/round (aka 1HP/sec)
x2 (cause Haste doubles it)
12HP/round (aka 2HP/sec)
That's already pretty damn nice and it "reduces damage" a lot better than AC in ToB where some enemies still tear through -20 AC (plus, you can easily get to the AC cap and still wear all of those items and you've still got a cloak slot to spare and it doesn't force you into using regen weapons)
But if you want some more quick regen as you run around you can use the Cloak of the Sewers' troll form to get you an extra 1HP/sec or 2 with haste, netting you 4HP/sec or 24HP/round which is almost a free Potion of Extra Healing (heals 27HP) every round.
Hexxat makes this even better cause she's got "natural" (it's actually from her amulet) 1HP/round regen.
And, of course, that's all without abusing the Potion of Regeneration stacking that can up as much as you can (though, again, you don't need it and I didn't use it cause I only discovered it now, after finishing the game), as long as you can be bothered to produce a ton of potions with Alchemy and resting (though they're temporary, so as you're drinking more you're wasting the duration of the previous ones, but it CAN get pretty ridiculous quickly and, hey, mages get crazy 8HP/sec WITHOUT HASTE regen from Shapechange -> Greater Wolfwere, so it's fair!).
TRAPS
Regular Traps: they eventually do 3d8+5 missile damage and 20 Poison damage with no save, Slays target if a Save vs. Death with a +4 bonus is failed. Pretty neat, especially if you stack a bunch, but not world-shattering.
Spike Traps: everybody knows how good Spike Traps are, so I won't waste much time on them. They do 20d6 magic damage, so 20-120 (average 70). Magic damage is rarely (and I mean rarely) resisted, which makes them top tier and they can crush even Demogorgon and the final boss easily. I generally get 7 of them so I have the max stackable (was this a thing in vanilla or is this limit SCS-only? I don't remember) whenever I want without simulacrums etc..
Time Traps: bonkers. Amazing. Insanely underrated. Let's do some ToB-stage calculations (this is just the damage I was doing at some point in ToB with IH+Righteous Magic, it's not 100% minmax'd):
Righteous Magic (max damage and 25 STR)+Improved Haste (9APR)+Time Trap (auto-hit) without backstabs/Assassination:
Firetooth +3 -> 29 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 203 damage
Belm +2 -> 28 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 56 damage
=
1 trap spent, 1 round = 259 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies.
Same thing, but with Assassination:
Firetooth +3 -> 147 * 7 attacks (main hand) = 1029 damage
Belm +2 -> 112 * 2 attacks (offhand) = 224 damage
=
1 trap spent, 1 round = 1253 non-variable (without taking into account potential resistances to pierce/slash) damage. Plus, this is damage you can divide among multiple enemies (eg backstabs for everyone aaaaand fall) and you can still do a lot of damage without Time Traps, it's just that auto-hit is great to make sure every attack hits.
All in all, Time Traps often (not always, ofc) provide more value per use than Spike Traps, especially cause you can divide the damage among several enemies. With a properly geared Assassin, in most fights even without Righteous Magic IH+Assasination+Time Trap = 9 dead enemies in 1 round, so you can start doing this in SoA easily. EDIT: also, when you think about probabilities, even though Spike Trap does 20d6 and technically that's 20-120 damage, in reality there's a ~83% chance to roll in the 60-80 range or ~53% to roll in the 65-75 range, so their damage is largely inferior to what it may seem at first, meanwhile, out Time Trap strategy rolls max damage always due to Righteous Magic!
And, supposedly, another trap exists... Hmmm... Don't bother, folks.
OTHER HIGH-LEVEL ABILITIES
Greater Evasion: dope! -6 bonus to AC, -3 bonus to saving throws, movement rate +2 and immunity to normal missiles. Lasts 5 rounds. I get 2 just in case, but it's rarely needed tbh. You got access to a lot of AC reducing gear with a thief (this is without Greater Evasion or any buffs and I could still get -2 if I used the Ring of Earth Control and the Cloak of the Dark Moon, but I'd rather keep my regen and thac0 stuff).
Scribe Scrolls: unfortunately pointless. The only half-decent spells you can easily get from other items (wands, White Dragon Scale etc.). Do not invest!
Avoid Death: -5 bonus to Save vs. Death, immunity to instant death effects, and +20 Hit Points. Lasts 5 rounds. It's aight. I get 2 later in the game just in case, but I rarely use it (good against Planetars so you don't get vorpal'd, would be good against Balors' vorpal effect too, but you can just Assassinate them).
THE GREAT LIST OF BACKSTAB-IMMUNE ENEMIES! OH, THE DESPAIR!
"Thieves are useless, there are too many backstab immune enemies!". Is that really the case? I mean, I know it's subjective (what you think are "too many", I mean), but too me the list is pretty short. The only thing that bothers me is ToB bosses being immune to it, but you can still handily deal with them as I'll show later. I think people think a lot of enemies are immune to backstab just cause they see past invisibility (like Demons do), but Assassination still works on them. So... Here's the list:
SoA/ToB backstab-immune enemies:
General enemy types:
-Barbarians (fun fact: there are almost no Barbarians in SoA/ToB and the majority of them are specific measly Orcs/Orogs/Minotaurs)
-Beholders (all types) <- Trap, even regular traps do it most of the time.
-Demiliches (NOT Liches in general) <- Use Spell Immunity from a scroll or Protection from Undead if you're low level.
-Devas/Planetars <-You should kill mage/clerics before they can summon them, but if you can't just Time Trap or Spike Trap.
-Dragons <- Time Trap handles them easily or just use a scroll of disintegration.
-Golems
-Slimes/Oozes
-A lot of mists/wraiths (I can't tell whether it's all of them or not, so I listed them below)
Specific enemies:
-3 out of the 6 enemies in the Heart Key fight in Watcher's Keep Final Seal level (The Huntress, the Hive Mother and Ameralis are immune, so Nalmissra, Xei Win Toh and even Y'Tossi are vulnerable)
-Aesgareth and his party
-Bone fiends (Bone Golem-looking demons)
-Specific demons in fight 2-5 of the Black Pits II (for some reason... Even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark is vulnerable, so why make these ones invulnerable?)
-Garock/Rock (the two minotaurs at the Machine of Lum level of Watcher's Keep)
-Guardian spirit (don't even remember who this is)
-Kiser (dude causing some mischief in Saradush)
-Liches, only two of them (Azamantes, the Spike Trap-able, along with his flaming skulls and Vongoethe in Amkethran)
-Mists/Wraiths: Mist/Swamp/Wandering Horrors, Vampiric Wraiths/Mists, Spellhaunts, Slave Wraiths and Demon Wraith (Watcher's Keep maze level)
-Velithuu (the ice salamander-looking demons in the Watcher's Keep Maze level)
Bosses (ie enemies you have to fight finish the game, plus Demogorgon cause he's the "boss" of Watcher's Keep):
-The Bhaalspawns (Balthazar, Gromnir, Illasera, Sendai, Yaga-Shura and his Lieutenants)
-Demogorgon
-Melissan
-Nyalee (technically a boss lol)
-Ravager and its Bone Blades
Everything else can be backstabbed! Including:
-Bodhi
-Irenicus
-The Slayer
-Pretty much every Demon (even the Lesser Demon Lord in the Underdark)
-Almost every Lich (even Kangaxx and Shangalar)
-Greater Werewolves/Wolfweres
-Mind Flayers (even their Master Brain)
-The Watcher's Keep statues
-Rakshasa
-Fire Giants
-Drow and so on (what else worries people?)
If they see past invisibility, just pop that assassination, brother!
And for those that can't be backstabbed we always have Time Traps! 9APR of auto-hit max damage is no joke. And takes us to...
ENEMIES IMMUNE TO TIME TRAP/STOP
They are just a few:
-Demogorgon
-Melissan
-Ravager
-Abazigal
-Aurumach/Ferrumach Rilmani
-Balthazar (only while in Lunar Stance)
-Guardian Spirit (who???)
Not that many and, really, the only ones who are a big deal in the non-tactical challenge SCS Insane game are Melissan and Ravager (which I'll cover later). Aurumach is also immune to +3 weapons and under, but he's too squishy to be a bother and can partially be hurt by normal traps (he's immune to magical damage, so Spike Traps don't work and the poison part of normal traps also doesn't work).
ENEMIES THAT REQUIRE +4 WEAPONS
Also not too many:
Ravager
Aurumach Rilmani <- mentioned it before, too squishy to be a bother.
Fallen Solar (NOT Fallen Planetar, it's the one from the Melissan battle) <- lure and 2-3 spike traps handles it
Demiliches <- usual cheese
Lesser Demon Lord <- vulnerable to Time Trap and backstabs
SO HOW DO WE DEAL WITH THEM TOB BOSSES?
Demogorgon: Spike Traps. Bye.
Yaga-Shura: Time Trap, hit him. Then deal with Lieutenants until you find him and then Time Trap him again.
Sendai: actually one of the most annoying fights in the game for single class solo thieves, because there are sooooo many enemies to handle it's a big bother. The important part is to Spike Trap her clones that cast magic before they spawn and to put a Time Trap at the left of the arena before killing that last clone (who's pretty weak, thankfully, so you can take your time to set things up), that way the reinforcements will trigger the Time Trap along with the real Sendai spawning and you can just hit her until she dies and she can't do anything. Remember that you have a million different sources of Improved Haste at this point, so you can re-buff. EDIT: Read about the Staff of the Magi on the weapons section. I fucked up and didn't have it cause I forgot to get it before moving on to ToB.
Abazigal: pre-fight 1 Time Trap to kill his human form in 1 round, 6 Spike Traps somewhere else -> Dragon (Time Trap immune), get him to trigger the 6 Spike Traps, then run and Spike Trap one or two times more. Dead. In vanilla it would be way easier cause dragons don't get the x3 SCS buff to HP.
Balthazar: one Time Trap. Done. Yeaaaah, he's too easy for pretty much every party, I should re-install the improved version of his fight at least.
Ravager: Time Trap AND backstab immunity! What a meanie! Besides the usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) and prioritizing thac0 boosting equipment, I used Black Blade of Disaster + 3 scrolls of Protection from Magical Weapons + 1 of Absolute Immunity. Harder to think of what to do than to actually do it. You gotta get a little lucky so that PfMW doesn't run out as he hits you and does the stun (sleep?) stuff on you or that you don't get dispelled too soon. Not too bad once you know what to do.
Melissan: again Time Trap and backstab immunity. The first phase is the whole fight, pretty much. Usual buffs (improved haste+righteous magic) + BBD + Spell Immunity: Abjuration (to prevent dispel) can end it fast before it gets outta control. After that it's just a matter of abusing Spike Trap (4 traps for each phase) by using Simulacrums (scrolls or Vhailor's), Project Images and/or Rest Wishes (stop hoarding scrolls, it's the final fight!).
RANDOM STATS
Total scrolls I used in the whole playthrough:
-3 Disintegrations for dragons (Firkraag/Thaxll'ssillyia/Saladrex). I coulda Time Trapped and hit them for a few times but this is easier.
-2 Black Blades of Disaster (Ravager + Melissan's first phase).
-2 Simulacrums (Melissan trap shennanigans).
-3 Protection from Magical Weapons (Ravager).
-1 Absolute Immunity, which coulda been another PfMW (Ravager).
-1 Protection from Undead (to kill Kangaxx's Demilich form early on).
Basically, feel free to use more scrolls than I did, cause you rarely need them.
Wands I used:
-1 charge of a wand of spellstriking to Breach Melissan at the start of her first phase.
-3 charges of a wand of cloudkill on random enemies after getting UAI, then I forgot about it.
Coulda used a lot more wands (especially spellstriking, but with regen and stuff I just waited til PfMWs ran out on some mages and so on), but I was too busy having fun with Time Trap Assassinations trying to kill as many enemies before they fell to the ground.
How many times I used the super cheesy Nymph Cloak that I love but avoided using to focus on thief-related strats:
-A few times against Rakshasa very early in the game (Watcher's Keep rakshasa can destroy a good deal of the second level on its own).
-Once to charm the mage in the Aesgareth fight very early in the game to rush the +1 STR (Machine of Lum) and +2 DEX (Lum + Deck of Many Things).
FINAL VERDICT
Tons of fun. It's actually been a while since I last bothered to really finish Throne of Bhaal all the way through, but I was having so much fun with my Assassin that I did it. And it's boooooooooooooooooooooooooooonkers to think that some people think they're underpowered. Bonkers! They're almost fightemage/thieves on their own. And even if you don't like positioning for backstabs... You barely need it. I pretty much only did that before I got Assassination (and even then I didn't need to rely on it too much cause I already had 8APR and so on), afterwards it's Assassination-a-palooza. Too bad you only get 1 so you have to rest a bunch though, but you can still do plenty of damage with just Time Traps if you don't wanna abuse resting.

Firstly, just wanted to say that the 400 hours is me restarting the game...four times over? I've also not been following this game, I knew it was coming out but I put at the back of my mind, never gave into the hype and only bought the game when a guy from work was talking about it.
Gameplay TL;DR:
Game is broken. By level 50, enemies either did 1 damage or buffed me to do more damage. Some of the guns are insanely fun but break the game. It's fun, but if you want a challenging experience wait till some good addons come out.
Story TL;DR
Main story is quite short, it's not effected by any side quests you just get different endings that you can choose, one ending feels more finalised but open to a sequel/DLC the others either just end (which is intented) or just end on a "To be continued."
Romance quests are very good but the romance is just do quest, sleep with them, end of romance, apart from one character.
Some of the side quests are VERY VERY good however and the overall theme of Cyberpunk is in my opinion, excellent, it's just let down by the main plot.
Bugs/Glitches TL;DR:
No crash to desktop, main problems were only for those strange people like myself who play non lethal but some of the endings are bugged, one of the end cut-scenes is bugged.
Overall TL;DR:
I think if you really really want to play this game, play it. I had a lot of fun and got my moneys worth, though I would be lying if I didn't say that I'm not dissapointed with the end product. If you're on the fence and you're reading this to see if it's worth £40-50 then I would say don't get the game, wait till next year when the modding scene has expanded more and all the DLC has come out, get it on a sale.
When the ending cutscene is bugged and after what...3-4 patches and the lead dev has said how proud he is of the PC version, I would say that it's best to hold off.
​
Gameplay:
I played purely on Very Hard and tried a no kill playthrough which...I couldn't do all the way due to certain sections of the game but for majority of the game I didn't kill anyone. What I liked about the game is that it didn't say "Oh well, you best get used to the taser weapon or the stun gun, because that's all you get!" like so many other FPS RPGs that offer that, I was using shotguns, sniperrifles, assault rifles, SMGs...anything, really. That's good!
My build:
https://nukesdragons.com/cyberpunk-2077/character?v=1&a=if4ig&s=iiifff44iigg&p=h42h83hd1hg2hh1u11u41ua3uh1b13b32b42b72b83b93bc1bd2be2bf2a01a41a62a81a91ab3ah1ai2aj1ak1al2w01w11w31w63w72wa3wb2wc2n01n21n43n73n82na1nc2nf1nh2s51sc1sk1c01c11c42c61c72c82c93ca2cb1cc1cf2r32e62eb2eh2ei1 If/When I replay, it will either be:
https://nukesdragons.com/cyberpunk-2077/character?v=1&a=a9kck&s=111999kkcckk&p=p02p11p21p32p42p51p61p72p81p91pj1pa1pb1pc2pd2pe2pf2pg2ph1pi1q01q12q23q41q51q63q71q81q93qa3qb3qd2qe1qf3qi1aa1ab3af3s31sa1sb1se2sf1si2sj1c01c11c32c51c61c82c93cb1cc1cf2cg2ch1ci1eh2
I did make my gear and I put all epic armour increasing mods into the slots, then with my weapons all epic crit chance or if they had 100% crit by default, Crit damage. I used Qiant Sandevistan which would slow down time and lowered the CD on it so I could use it every 19 seconds.
To put this into perspective of how this was at level 50, the most damage done to me was the end boss and it was about...20-30 damage, other than that, everything was 1 damage. With Katana and Cold Blood I had about 14-15k armour, with just the Katana it was about 6k and with any other gun it was 5k armour. I got this by upgrading everything to as far as the game would allow which when you hit 50 is just one extra upgrade. My health thanks to the consumable perk and health perk was about 850 to 1k with all consumables. My Cyberware made me immune to bleeding, my perk made me immune to poision, if I took shock damage my armour would increase by 10% and I would take no damage and fire would increase my damage by 10%.
So...I took 1 damage with a 800+ health pool, I could kill everything very easily dealing about 24k damage on some enemies and I could slow down time and kill everything before they could even react. This is on VERY HARD.
"Why complain about it being broken if you broke it?"
Because I was told that the secret ending was very difficult and I was also told, by the game, that in very hard, you have to use EVERYTHING to survive. The problem is the game devs...for some reason...lets you out level all the mobs in the game, at level 50 the only "yellow" enemies were two mechs on the secret ending and the end boss, all of which died super quick anyway because the damage is broken.
The other problems I had and the other reason I hit 50 was I was told "Do the sidequests, they effect the ending." and with the Cyberpsycho being all about keeping them alive, I thought "There's gotta be a moment where she comes in and helps me or someone out." But...nope, you don't get anything other than money. Nothing happened when I did all the police side quests, nothing happened when I did all the races, the only quests that did matter were two side quest chains, Panam and Johnny...maybe the boxing ones.
"But you get tons of cash!"
If you go down the hacker route, it's kinda pointless because you get all your hacks via crafting or random drops from terminals.
"Ah! But you went guns blazing, all guns, must've cost a ton to get all your armour up, weapons and ammo!"
Afraid not. Once you get the epic grenade blueprints you can make your set for a lot of your upgrades, you just buy cans of soda from vending machines and take them apart which doesn't cost that much anyway. The legendaries are a bit difficult, granted and that's why I said the boxing quest chain is actually very useful if you want to play a non hacker route.
Outside of upgrades once you get any weapon mod and the perk that grants a 20% chance to get an extra item when you make gear, you're set as they all use the materials you get from soda cans or random junk items.
General view
I suppose when it's all said and done, I can't say I didn't enjoy the gameplay. I played 400 hours of it. It is to easy and if I wanted to do a "All guns blazing" build again, maybe just stick to epic gear. If we get a new game plus or some difficulty mods that would be perfect, something like enemies using tech weapons more to shoot through walls, more smart weapons hitting you behind cover, more netrunners hacking you all the time and having them stun/blind you or something, just anything other than setting you on fire...a cyberware mod makes them buff you for crying out loud.
One of the main reasons I went the gunner route was because I saw so many great guns I thought, at the time, I couldn't use so...I will say that with my build, all the guns I had, it was a lot of fun, I really really enjoyed it...it's just far far to easy, I wanted something to say "Ok, you think you got this, let's put it to the test!"
Story:
I didn't really know all that much about Cyberpunk coming in, I love Bladerunner and Ghost in the shell, distopian stories where it has a message and hopefully a nice ending.
Cyberpunks story was good, there are some side quests that I will remember, I won't say which ones but I will say that if you like story, it's good to pick them up. There aren't that many of them, a lot of side quest will be just "Kill the dude. Steal the thing. Hack the thing." with a text being sent to you on why you should care, most of the time I didn't really care all that much but those that did offer something a bit more, did make me pause and think about it, even think about them as I walked away from the game on what was the "best" option.
The romances are...ok. There is certainly more effort in Panam than the others, who, do have their own quest lines and they're the best quest lines in the game but Panam, as a romance story line does seem more fleshed out. The others are sadly very much a "Do my quests, then do me, ok see you at the end of the game!" Panam fights alongside you, you both go on a big character journey together and the fact she joins you in one of the best endings says a lot. A bit dissapointing for me, as I liked Judy and one of her endings was very nice but when I saw what Panam got...argh, was frustrating.
The main plot itself is unfinished. If you can be bothered (like I was) do all the side quests, everything, then do the main plot. Not only will you find that during your time the main plot is very short only about...10-15 quests? Of which none of the side quests you can do effect them, at all, no dialogue options that I could see, none of them alter the story a bit...nothing. The endings aren't effected by sidequests either, you get extra endings, two if you do two side quests but that's it.
I won't spoil what the endings contain, but I will say, for the sake of saving your time if you're reading this before doing them, that the secret ending is pointless and lazy. It's basically one of the endings but they removed the NPC's from the ending and just spawn some mechs, then after that you get the same boss fight you would get regardless of the ending and then you get a rehashed ending of another ending and an epilogue from another ending. Basically they just took apart the endings and stuck them together to get the "Secret" ending, you get about...a few bits of dialogue from a character but...it's not that great honestly.
The biggest problem is this is a "The ending will be in the DLC!" kinda game, where, even the main character points out how pointless the whole thing was. I HATE these kind of endings, the only saving grace is that...I HOPE, this is going to be in the free DLC they're doing this year.
Glitches and Bugs:
At this point in time, I came across TONS of bugs. Nothing that crashed me to desktop par once (which is a deal breaker for me if it happens to many times) the only issue I did come across was playing non lethal, where, if you grab a enemy and drop them during stealth...for some reason, they are more prone to glitching and exploding in a bloody mess. If you stand and drop them, make sure the ground is as flat as it can be, you might, MIGHT be ok. The other thing to do is enemies would show the death animation (no breathing) BUT if you pick them up, drop them, turn around, sometimes the animation will change to show they're still alive. If you hit them whilst they're on the ground, even if it's a stungrenade touching them, yes, touching, not exploding, you throw a grenade at them and it bounces off of them, they die.
Cars would smash into concrete, textures would take ages to load, sound would be to loud from time to time, some dialogue had the tech distorted effect some didn't, Tech guns randomly not charging up to shoot...all of which I could ignore as they either didn't effect me to much, I could fix by saving the game and reloading or were just funny.
When the endings are bugged, that to me is very different and that's what made me go from "This is one of the best games I've played!" to "They just stop caring."
So during the "Bad" ending, dialogue wouldn't play I just saw text, I had to reload a save to make it work. On the "Good" ending, during a quest I was told to drive a vehicle and then park it in a tent, the only problem is I couldn't do it because an invisible wall was blocking it and I would just flip over, I couldn't get out to continue the quest or fail it, but luckily you can skip it. Then on the "Good" ending, on the very last cutscene I drove into the sunset...literally into the sunset as the Vehicle was driving on the skybox.
When you haven't even tested the ending, worse, you say "We're proud of our PC version!" it's such a slap in the face, yes, I'm sure these will be fixed...I hope, but I don't want games in the future to be like this, I want a finished game, certainly if you're asking £40 for it. The free DLC better be something decent and not "Paint your car!" but either way, the damage has been done and it's a real real shame. This game deserved to be polished, it has so much potential and there's so much to like here it's just sad to see it be this...messy and uncared for.
Overall:
400 hours of gameplay, do I regret it? ...No? I mean, I've come away disappointed because of how bad some of the flaws are, more so with the lead dev saying how proud he is of the PC version but...I would be lying if I didn't say that if they brought out new game plus, there was some mods that made the game a lot harder...I wouldn't go back.
I will play Male V romancing Panam as I have a very strong feeling that's the "intended" storyline and though my choices won't matter in the end, there would be some things I would do differently. I did enjoy my playthrough, I like Judy as a character I just wished I could do more, like...something as simple as hang out on her couch and watch TV with her would've been fine, doesn't have to be grand and epic, just simple character interactions...which you get through quests with Panam.
Could I recommend this game to others though? Not really...If the glitches and bugs was just the odd here and there, ok, fine, it's an open world game with amazing graphics, sure, you will get some problems..but when your endings are bugged? Nah, it's not acceptable.
Maybe some people can look past it, I would like to but I just feel...like a chump. Here's hoping it gets better, they did say they were working on it more and didn't find it acceptable but...not sure if that's just console, we'll see.

Edit: These are great! Thanks to all contributors,past and future.
From a couple posts in today “Free talk Friday” post, I had an idea. It may be fun...
Following the format from this comment from u/elliewinks30, what are your thoughts?
*Law of Rare Items* - rare items will inevitably appear on the board with 2 seconds left and no hope of collecting before the round ends *Corollary* - itemt drops fine, but then stops on the second to the bottom row and then there are no more matches right there for the rest of the game and so it remains uncollectable. *Law of Rare items addendum* - should also include 2x items in events. Seems like I can play the last 25 seconds of a game with nary an item in sight, then boom, a 2x item with 2 seconds to go. *Another corollary to the law of rare items* - After a long and arduous effort to get the last of a rare item, within seconds of collecting it one or two more will pop up on the screen. Doubly so if you're not using a lucky emoji.
*Law of common items* - when you only need one more common item you will receive 50 of the ones you have completed first
*Law of Bonus time* - when finishing up bonus time after the round ends, the power ups remaining on the board will automatically swipe in the opposite direction of where you need them to.
*Law of Creating Stars* - Just as you trigger an emoji's power that removes emojis from the board, you notice where you could have made a star. You get to watch as the emoji's power blasts off the emojis, thus removing the possibility of a star.
*Law of Rainbow Falls* - Getting a Level 5 score at Level 1 and a Level 1 score at Level 5.
*Law of ‘Just one more game’* - When you can barely keep your eyes open any more, and suddenly win a 5 lives prize.
*Law of Missions* - Only after clearly the Daily Challenges or spinning the Prize Wheel will missions appear requiring these
*Law of “that one character”* - regardless of the type of mission, rest assured when the rng comes up it will be your worse emoji for that type of thing and all in one game to boot exaggerated example “score 70 million in one game with level one Jack Sparrow” or “use 9 stars+suns in one game with Mickey Mouse”
*Law of the Prize Wheel* - You will spin the wheel four times. Of those four times, you will land on 300 coins three.
*Law of star combinations* - When you need to make a staother, you will get 4 stars on the board, and you will not be able to get an item or other power-up next to said star, without destroying said star from maneuvering the board to get them next to each other in the first place.
*Law of unforeseeable cascades* - if you need an item/star, you will get 4 stars on the board. You will carefully make swaps so that if an item falls, it will be in the same column as one of your star. You will make a swap which sets off a cascade from new emoji drops, and an item will fall at least a column away from all four stars.
*Law of Item Sandwiches* - When you need a stastar combo, an item will inevitable sandwich itself between them.
*Law of Balloons* - you will never, ever remember to pop balloons on the screen the first time that mission comes up. You're lucky if you remember the 10th.
*Law of “House always wins”* - Las Vegas style slot machine. Where the odds are so greatly locked against you.
*Law of Spectacular Repeat* - every time you do something spectacular out of pure luck that you have no chance of repeating in this lifetime, the same feat will spawn as a mission immediately after.
*Law of multi-map events* - you struggle to get items or clears all the way up to the last box when you finally need only 2 to end the map. And you get 17.
*Laws of arbitrary color emoji* - Example: Score 10000000 with a yellow emoji. Okay, I just happened to use Gonzo for another mission and he counted, but I use King Candy, who has significantly MORE yellow and he doesn't count?
*Law of Missions* - You will instantly forget which mission you are trying to clear as soon as you hit play. Was it horizontal or vertical swaps? What were the combo items? Was it blitz mode or regular? Who knows??
*Second Law of Missions, corollary to law of balloons* - Despite specifically checking what the missions are before starting, you will often forget the details during the game. Was is just matching suns or only during blitz, horizontal or vertical, etc.? Every time this happens, you wish you could see the mission details if you pause and get annoyed that you can't.
*Law of the 3 Live Spin* - you will rack up 6-9 more lives when you don’t have time to keep playing but when you have zero lives and nothing to do you you’ll spin no lives
*Law of Lowering Proficiency* - on your 25th game a continuous cascade resulting in 3 rainbow stars, a sun and a score of 300,000 happens
*Law of frozen screen or glitch* - this only happens when you are having the game of your life. You’ll finish the combo mission, get the 3 items you’ve been needing and the game will freeze or never end, forcing you to quit, lose a life and have to start over.
*Law of being one short* - most commonly happens on a daily challenge. You’ll have under 5 to go, usually only 1 in order to complete a mission
*Law of conflicting emojis* - 1 to 3 of your missions will require different emojis, not allowing any multitasking. Most commonly happens during an event adding another element of conflict
*Law of spending diamonds* - You spend diamonds on a box hoping for a specific character and fail. Then you get the character you wanted for free when you complete an event map.
*Law of Villain Events* - You will collect an item before the Villain’s power triggers, but it won’t be credited in time and the villain will attack anyways.
*Law of Event Switching* - when you switch to a non-event emoji to complete a mission, when you switch back to an event emoji you will forget to turn the event back on and you will waste a life.

Note: Many of the links are to the Amity Arena Library, a website devoted to the game which includes tracking the history of it through patchnotes and a running history of what cards entered and left the meta. Their website was a valuable resource for this post.

Mobile gaming has taken off like a wildfire since the advent of the smartphone boosted the average processing power a phone could carry. Initially it took the form of crossing over older, more easily runnable games onto the mobile market to... mixed success, but in recent years we've seen both the West and East use mobile gaming to replace the old fashioned movie tie in game. It's easily accessable, has a much wider reach than consoles or PC, you can take it on the go and standards are inherently lower for mobile games than they are a full 60 dollar game.
Since the 2010s, mobile gaming has shifted to what's called the "Freemium" module. The game itself is free to download and start playing, but is insideously designed with obnoxious paywalls or artificial limiters put in place to limit how much you can play each day. If the game is part of a pre-existing franchise, additional money can be made through a premium currency or a chance to obtain high-powered units by rolling a slot machine random chance mechanic. And thus, gacha gaming was born. This sub has had several threads in the past on high profile gacha games, such as the monolithic Fate Grand/Order, Pokemon Go or Genshin Impact. One of the more popular things to roll for in gachas as a consequence is wallpapers for your homescreen, especially for high-grade units as they're usually animated to move a little bit on the homescreen. Today we're looking a low to mid-tier gacha game that rose and fell with the advent of one catgirl. Let's talk RWBY.
RWBY is an online web anime made by Rooster Teeth focusing on four prospective monster hunters who get embroiled in a world-spanning shadow war. It's of debatable quality in matters of animation, combat, voice acting, story, worldbuilding, romance, and it's kind of a little racist if I'm being honest, but one of the major positives of RWBY is that the series tends to have good character design. Series creator Monty Oum set in the guidelines for the show while making it that most if not every design should be made to be cosplay friendly, hence why most of the outfits have things most costume designers haven't heard of like... pockets. And Rooster Teeth, above all else, likes making money. So they know people like RWBY's character designs, enough so that in 2017 plans were made to release a gacha game themed around RWBY called Amity Arena, which would be developed by Korean company NHN Entertainment.
Amity Arena is a PvP tower defense game. Each player controls two turrets and a tower and has three minutes to use units themed from the show to destroy the other player's structures. Whoever took out more wins, destroying a tower is an instant victory. When the game launched, it had three tiers for units- Common (generally held for mooks or low-tier characters in the show), Rare (roughly protagonist-level or elite mooks go here) and Epic (High tier characters usually with an active ability that did lots of damage or stopped enemies in their tracks). The game launched in October 2018 to generally positive reviews from both mobile game players and RWBY fans alike. Fans were happy to get a lot of new official art for the characters in the game and the base gameplay loop was fun. Criticism at the time was largely themed around the lack of content besides PVP matches and some issues with the meta but overall, the launch went well. Each month, the developers would add new units, including popular characters like Neopolitian, Cinder Fall, Zwei the dog, and more.
But everything changed with February 20th 2019, which introduced Neon Katt, the titular catgirl (RWBY characters are themed around fairytales, except for Neon, who is themed around Nyan Cat, and her partner Flynt Coal, who is themed off a potentially racist joke made by Rooster Teeth).
Neon is a character from RWBY Volume 3 who's part of a team that RWBY face during a tournament arc. Her partner, Flynt Coal, was part of the game at launch, and Neon would join him a few months later. Neon in the show is a cocky fighter who taunts the heroes and zips around on rollarskates, which in-game is represented by Neon skating towards the nearest enemy structure to her and hitting it, while all units within a radius of Neon are taunted and provoked into attacking her above all other targets unless they-selves are coded to hit structures. On its own, not a bad idea for a unit, but Neon came with four big caveats:

• Neon was the fourth corner of the square that became known as the Artillery Arena meta, which saw Neon, Cinder (who had an AOE ability she could use which was wide enough to hit a turret and tower and single-handedly killed the entire launch meta of using fragile swarm units), Zwei (an on-summon high damage AOE on any part of the map) and Penny (another AOE ability that instead did chip damage and locked a location down) turn the game's meta into a chip game. Every player ran at least one of the above cards, if only to counter the others. Neon was the universal counter in being anti-swarm and the hardest to stop, especially at launch where her taunt range was so large, it could grab units from the other lane.
  
• Neon launched with a unit weight of "Heavy", which meant that if she was behind a unit she could push it on her way to the turret. This launched a sub-meta where Neon was placed behind a larger unit such as the Ursa (which like Neon was a unit that focused on structures but was made slow to cover its tankiness), to push them towards the turret faster. This was called Disco Bear. They eventually patched this so Neon phased through units by making her a lightweight.
  
• Neon couldn't die. She was invincible until she hit a structure, which combined with her taunt meant that Neon was very annoying to fight and could lock down an entire lane of the battlefield by being placed well and taunting enemies to let you prepare a counter.
  
• Neon was a very cheap unit to summon. Amity Arena uses a mechanic called "Aura" where all units cost a certain amount and it recharges over the match- for instance, protagonist Ruby Rose has a Rare card that costs four Aura to summon, while Weiss Schnee has two rares that cost three and five. Neo only cost two Aura, which made her one of the cheapest units of the game and thus disproportionately powerful for her cost and easy to cycle through your deck so you could spam her.
  

From the word go, Neon is an unpopular unit; she's clearly overbalanced and elements such as the Disco Bear glitch have players thinking she'll have to get knocked down in a nerf- she'll either be made slower, more expensive, or able to die pre-hitting a structure, right?
Neon doesn't show up in the next patch. Instead, before she's fixed, an entire new class of units called Legendaries are introduced, and this is where the game goes full gacha. Legendaries were meant to represent the highest tier characters in the game, the ones who were either the most popular characters or the highest-tier fighters in the show. Or in some cases, the popular ships such as combo cards for White Rose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumblebee (Blake/Yang) and Flower Power (Ren/Nora). Legendaries, representing their value, were impossibly rare and had an infinitely small chance of actually appearing (The most reliable method was to buy the premium chests and hope you'd roll a Legendary, which often cost tons of money), and if you did get one, there was no way to guess which Legendary you'd actually get. Some such as White Rose and Adam were high tier units, others like Hazel or Checkmate were... kinda broken at launch. The playerbase isn't happy at this, especially as free to play players are left out in the cold and reliant on the game giving them high tier units effectively out of pity.
Neon would get a small nerf in the April patch which lessened her taunt range and killed the Disco Bear meta, but her invincibility would be left untouched, even as players submitted feedback regarding how to make it more efficient. The official Amity Arena discord has a weekly feedback section on Tuesdays where players could submit up to four suggestions on how to nerf/buff units and general requests for quality of life such as "Can this character get a new skin from this part of the show," or "Can we have an option to lower music volume that's not just muting all music?" (they never did add that second request) Neon would then remain in this state until the November patch, despite constant weekly requests for a Neon rework, and all it would do is make Neon functionally mortal, in that she had a flat shield bar of 20 that would be lowered by one for each attack before the next hit would kill her. Neon could now die... but your chances of actually doing enough damage to stop her were slim, and regardless, you were now at a serious Aura defecit.
It took seven months for this one unit to get a substantial nerf, all while the game added new units every week and the number of units being affected by patches each month began to gradually sink. To round up some of the major issues people had with Amity that developed throughout 2019 alongside Neon's general existance making life hell:

• Common units were meant to be chump fodder, but could level up the most amount of times with a level cap at 13. This meant longer-term units that had a long time to level such as the Xiong Family card, the AK-130s the Beowolf Pack, or the White Fang gunners, could become shockingly strong if players grinded the money up to reach max level.
  
• A pre-existing divide between free players and players willing to burn money IRL to get access to premium currencies led to a huge disparity in play. Free players have long complained about how hard it is to scrounge money together to level up units at higher costs as even the basic currency of Lien is hard to get large quantities of (you get a certain amount every match win but otherwise you need to burn the Schnee Premium Dust currency for the highest payouts, but SPD is also needed for shop resets, buying crates or unlocking cosmetics). The developers used to do frequent double weekends where all gains were doubled for a weekend, but these became less and less frequent as time went on. Legendaries only added to the divide, as their rarity was bad enough for players willing to spend money (one player, known as one of the largest whales in the community, in trying to get Sienna Khan, reported burning nearly nine hundred dollars on her, while taking nearly six hundred to get the Ice Flower card).
  
• One actual counter was born to fight Neon in the Argus Shield, a stationary unit that existed solely to stall units and take damage. At 2 Aura, it was the first structure to counter Neon, which allevated one of the primary problems with Neon in that no way to counter her was cost-efficient for an enemy player. They buffed the Wall to 3 Aura eventually which killed that hope, and all this happened before Neon's November nerf.
  
• The Summer of 2019 saw a large number of defensive units released; alongside the Argus Shield, several different units were released themed around turrets for the technological kingdom of Atlas, such as the Beam Turret. The Atlesian Burrow Gun was the straw that broke the camel's back and made for a miserable meta as the Burrow Gun would only appear (and be available to take damage) when a unit entered its range. These three units together were all very overpowered on launch and led to a large exodus of players sick of defensive and chip-based metas, especially as what few offensive units that were good enough to counter these metas (such as Professor Port and Adam Taurus) were often nerfed into the ground within a month of release.
  
• Also around this time it became apparent that the developers were unable to meet the quotas that Rooster Teeth was forcing on them. The social media team admitted that a certain number of units needed to be in the game in time for Winter 2019 when Volume 7 was set to start, and as the year went on more and more game-breaking bugs were being found in units, or they were at best horrifically undertuned or overpowered. The Apathy was perhaps the largest case of this, as an unfound bug pre-release meant that the Apathy (who have a passive ability that let them self-duplicate) had no cap on their power, meaning that they could immediately overwhelm defenses and in the case of some phones, be such a resource hog the phone would crash. Many Legendary units were especially guilty of being under-tuned due to low Legendary availability meaning they were simply weren't powerful enough to compare with high-levelled units. Checkmate's ability simply didn't work at launch, and Neon made several more such as Hazel Rainart a joke. May Marigold's invisibility bubble would have been an interesting game changer... were it not for a bug that made it that units placed in the bubble still played their sound lines, meaning players knew what to expect. Things were so bad that when Flower Power launched and wasn't broken or needed an emergency patch, the playerbase were shocked.
  

Unfortunately, the Novemember patch did little to stop the problems with Neon, and a new problem would rear its head for Christmas: Jinn. This unit embodied many of the problems players had: She was a Legendary so it would be hard for free players to get her, and only added to the sheer number of Legendaries that were out there. She was another structure card, and she was horrifically broken. Stopping time for seven seconds in an area around any friendly units, Jinn broke the game overnight, with players horrified at how little playtesting she'd clearly had. Most chip units now couldn't damage structures as Jinn simply could stop time and freeze the turret for the duration of the attack. And to make matters worse? She cost two Aura, meaning it was very easy to cycle a deck and start Jinn spamming.
And yet at two aura she was still one of the only cost-efficient Neon counters... until they patched her to be worth three Aura instead. Talking of the feline menace, January saw Neon get a HP nerf that set her shield at 14. Finally, Neon could be realistically be taken out, still at an Aura defecit but at least it can be countered and now they just have to raise her Aura- why are you buffing her game?
Less than a month later, Neon got, of all things, a buff. Her HP shield was set at 20, and her attacks now did double damage. This is around the point where a lot of players begin to suspect the developers aren't listening to feedback and more long-term players dip out or drop the game. Neon got touched one more time in April, which slowed her down (which itself was a problem as Neon's lessened speed on spawn simply made her better at generating aggro), she dealt 10% less damage and made it somewhat easier to hit her enough to kill her, but a new problem was on the horizon. Because Neon was now no longer the game's White Whale for patches.
Meet the White Fang Gunner Barracks. Added in September 2019, the Barracks fell under many player's radar simply because they were horrifically undertuned. Their gimmick was that every few seconds, a White Fang Gunner would spawn, with three spawning on death. In April, as Neon got her last appearance in the patches, the Barracks got a huge buff and became the centerpiece of the meta; they now spawned two Gunners, which made them immensely valuable for just five Aura. You could overwhelm many anti-swarm units before they had a chance, and shred your way through turrets.
The Barracks would then go six months before this overtuning was rectified, barring one nerf in August that lowered their health to try and stem the tide of units. To sum up every other thing that went wrong during the year meta-wise:

• The playercount was getting so low that players were able to make lists of the AI bots the developers had in place so lower-level players had a challenge (Amity breaks up players by a trophy system where you gain trophies with every win, and by this point most of the active players were in the 2500 to 3500 range. This also meant new players steamrolled through the lower levels only to hit a brick wall in the 3000 range, with the only reliable solution being to willingly lose matches until you were in your optimal range and grind victories until you reached a certain level.
  
• The patches became more and more threadbare, going from 8+ units getting changed each month in early 2019 to three units at most getting changed in 2020 patches outside of the anniversary patch going back to the golden days of eight. The only area where they didn't get more threadbare was in the cosmetics and emotes that the developers were cranking out, all of which were only available through hours of grinding or premium currencies. This was despite the fact that the units were being released slower, going from once a week to once a fortnite.
  
• The majority of units added in 2020 were Epic or Legendary tier, which were the hardest to get for free players unless they got lucky and they were added to the store (and if they had the lien as a Legendary in the store costs a flat 40,000 Lien). One Common and four Epics were released compared to twelve Epics and seven Legendaries. The release of Moonslice Adam especially was annoying for this regard, as Adam already had a Legendary released (at least for Team RWBY, each of them headlined a Legendary when it came to the team attack cards), and this was clearly done to pander to Adam's fans again as his first unit saw a spike in interest in the game. The math was done and showed how artifically scarce Legendaries were made.
  
• The undeovertuning was still in play. Colossus is seen as one of the worst cards in the entire game because of its gimmick. I have literally never seen anyone play it. Flynt became overtuned and now he's a staple thanks to his trumpet's AOE attack being able to hurt turrets and shred most units. Launcher Nora was an especially overtuned unit thanks to her high-damage constant AOE barrage and long range meaning she could annhilate most anything if given enough cover. Even after patches she's still dangerous. September saw the White Fang Dropship Formation added, which was widely seen as a terrible unit and done as an emergency addition because the planned unit for September in the Grimm Seer had to be cut last minute for technical reasons.
  
• The game has barely had significant content added since launch, with the primary gameplay still just being PVP. Barring Battle of Beacon (a mode where you can play as Ruby and Weiss and fend off Grimm which most players just use to grind chests, and no, they still haven't added Blake or Yang) and Plaza (a lobby where you can dress up as a character and run around Beacon), the game has added no new features and quality of life content players have requested since launch (rerolling in the shop, Superior Crates having guaranteed Legendary spawn rates) have been released at a snail's pace (you still can't reroll Legendaries if you're looking for a specific unit). Academies where players can unite to trade units and chat still lacks features that have been requested for years such as the ability to delete messages. And Plaza immediately went to hell because players were doing erotic role play in the chats and after people came forward with proof that minors were being sexually harassed in the Plaza or being coerced into side-channels, the dev response was to... just turn off the chat entirely instead of banning the accounts or implementing moderation. This also removed the chatlog which deleted a lot of the evidence of said harassment.
  

As OctobeNovember comes in, the players are getting more and more furious. The weekly feedback includes a near constant demand for an acknowledgement from the developers given how often it feels like the feedback is being ignored. The social media team get caught several times hyping up how the coming patch would address player concerns, only for said patch to lack those units. The meta has been locked down to the Xiong Family, Flynt, Launcher Nora, Spider-Mines and the hell-cat herself in Neon. Everyone runs at least one of these, people run meta decks not because they want to, but because it's the only way to have a chance of victory.
And then in December, things implode. The patch for the month was set to launch on December 10th with the monthly event missions. But when the clock rolls around, the event missions (which usually take about two weeks to do if you're doing as many as you can a day)... has a six day timer. And the update doesn't come out. The art team doesn't release new unit art. The shop has no special timed bundles. There's no patch notes. And then the Twitter team who've been hard carrying the game through... actually talking to the players and acknowledging the grievances they have... admitted that they don't know what's going on either. The best guess is that the devs have come down with Covid, but no statements to confirm or deny this leave it as guesswork. The timer eventually got reset and people could do the event, but then on Christmas itself, another issue.
Ruby has appeared in the plaza on Halloween (her canonical birthday) and Christmas, and if you go talk to her you get free stuff. But on Christmas people, people discovered that Ruby was talking as if you'd already talked to her. Because they hadn't updated Ruby yet for 2020. She still thought it was 2019 so if you'd talked to her then for goodies, she had none now. They patched it eventually but a lot of people didn't see this fix before the timer ran out to get the free stuff.
Some have resorted to memes to cope with the fact that the game just seems to have died out of the blue. Others have been trying to desperately rally the players and find a way to save it. Some resorted to friendly mockery of the whales who'd spent thousands on a game that seems to be dying (seriously though gacha games need to curb this shit but they won't because whales are godsends for their bank balances).
If the game doesn't get an update in January then two months without new content will mark the end, and the already significant playercount drops will only increase. And it's hard to say if any one thing could have turned Amity Arena's fate around beyond just "Have a better balancing team who can respond better to feedback." Neon began the time of death, but by the time December rolled around the meta was in a horrifically toxic place where if you wanted to make any progession, you had to get down and dirty with the pigs. The team just constantly failed to balance problem units outside of their emergency hotfixes of Jinn, and more often then not they went after units and buffed or nerfed them at random going off playcounts to determine what needed fixing instead of the actual written feedback they were getting. It's clear from the references to the show and some of the attempts to reach out to the community that at least one person in the team genuinely wanted to make the good appealing to RWBY fans, but somewhere during the game's lifespan, they lost their way. Less focus needed to be put on how to milk the players, and instead focusing on making a game sustainable and enjoyable enough to warrant the cosmetics and emotes. The game's failure ultimately isn't on the playerbase. It's on the people who were actually making the game who chose to slack off because they thought it acceptable to do so.
Thanks for reading.
EDIT: HOT OFF THE PRESSES, I JUMPED THE GUN
Had I waited one more day, my story would have had a far more sudden ending, as the game just announced its shutdown for January.
RIP.