Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Thalen
Tonight we are down several folks because of various reasons. Grace and Tam are both travelling and Ammo was off celebrating her birthday. As a result we go forward with one of the smaller casts we have had in awhile. Tonight we talk a bit about Genshin Impact and the recent Resin adjustments that have been announced. Bel talks about his experiences with the World of Warcraft Exile’s Reach new player starter island. This goes a bit into the awkward fit that it causes combined with the level squish that came in with the Shadowlands pre-patch. We then get into a discussion about games that support asymmetrical difficulty or what is generally referred to as a “handicapping system”. We talk about how this can maybe make it easier to play games with your young children that can’t quite manipulate the moves that well yet. Kodra and Thalen share their progress with Ring Fit and we delve into a discussion about the recent D&D 5th Edition games that have entered early access. Finally we talk a little bit about Spiritfarer and the charming life of being a friendly grim reaper.
Yesterday we were talking about soloing the various elite world bosses in Genshin Impact and some of my friends indicated that they were hesitant to take the leap and start farming these. The thing is there is going to be a certain point in the game where you absolutely have to start killing these on a regular basis in order to get the materials needed to ascend your characters. The truth is that if you know what the fight requires of you they are all fairly easy to take down by yourself. This morning I thought I would take a bit and talk through my thoughts on each of the fights. They are by no means a definitive guide to the encounters, but more the sorts of things that I do when I need to take them down.
The Cube Family
Currently there are three elites in the game that I collectively refer to as the “cubes”. Technically they are all called “hypostasis” which doesn’t make an awful lot of sense, so I am going to continue referring to them as cubes. Essentially you have 4 cubes rotating an octahedron in the center that will glow the color of the element you are encountering. Currently this exists in an Air, Electric and Earth form and this little glowing cube is the only part of the boss that can be damaged. For the most part these encounters all involve avoiding some mechanics until you get an opening and then can burn the little octahedron. All three also are characterized by a final burn phase that requires you to take out three constructs in order to prevent the boss from healing back up. I will go into more detail as I talk about each of the encounters specifically.
Aenemo Hypostasis – Wind Cube
Region – Mondstadt
Closest Port – Starfell Valley
Ascension Characters – Jean, Sucrose, Venti, Xiao
This is likely the easiest of the three cubes because it doesn’t really require much in the way of elemental matching. Air is a neutral element and as a result pretty much everything seems to damage this cube equally. Essentially you are going to be avoiding a bunch of attacks and then shortly after the octahedron will fall to the ground allowing you to get in some dps. All of the cube fights require patience and waiting until the moment you should be dpsing. During any one of these burn phases you are likely only going to get a single attack rotation before it summons back the four cubes and goes into the next avoid phase.
Final Burn Phase
When you have gotten the boss down to a sliver of health it will trigger the final burn phase. When this happens a number of updrafts appear around the arena surrounding the boss as well as a number of anemo icons floating in the air. Your goal will be to use the updrafts to collect all of the anemo icons before the phase is over. Each icon you are unable to collect will heal the boss a percentage of their health and force you to go back into the normal dps and avoid phases, until once again you have dropped the health down enough. Thankfully your will keep your progress from the earlier phase allowing you to finish off collecting the icons and ultimately ending the fight.
Similar to the air cube, this fight is going to have burn phases and avoid phases. The two that are going to be most prevalent is a phase is going to be rock, paper, scissors where it summons a fist, then summons scissors and then slams down a sheet onto the ground. Another common phase will involve the cube turning into a drill of sorts. In both of these cases there will be an octahedron drop immediately following allowing you to burn. This one is more challenging than air because there are two large avoid phases that either cause it to spawn rotating lasers or a swirl of mini cubes that shoot out from the center of the arena. The secret to both of these however is if you are not good at avoiding such things… you can simply “ring out” and leave the area of the fight because the effect do not draw beyond the stone platform you are standing on.
Final Burn Phase
The burn phase for this fight is going to require you to have brought some fire damage, as that is the only way I have found to reliably dps the three octahedrons that spawn. I have a special team that I build for this fight including Amber and Xiangling, but you can in theory take care of this with any fire champion. Three copies of the octahedron will spawn surrounding the center of the ring and you have to burn all three within a time limit. Any that you do not kill will heal the boss, forcing you back into another avoid and burn phase sequence. Again you get to keep progress done between burn phases so anything you killed stays dead.
Geo Hypostasis – Earth Cube
Region – Liyue
Closest Port – Sea of Clouds
Ascension Characters – Ningguang, Noelle
This is the fight that I enjoy the least because it seems to take forever. This fight is going to involve earth constructs, which means you either need a claymore user or another earth magic wielder in your party because other attacks seem to take forever to drop these constructs. Noelle for example does a really good job of clearing earth constructs especially if her ultimate attack is up. I’ve heard Klee bombs pack the sort of punch of a Claymore and can be used for clearing as well, but I have not personally tested this. So I am going to talk about the correct way to do the fight, and the way that I often do the fight.
The Correct Way
Essentially this fight is about earth construct maintenance. If you allow them to stay up too long you can the sort of AOE earthquake damage that can be dealt during this fight can get completely out of control. There will be five pillars that spawn into the arena, one in the center and four equidistant around the edge of the arena. In this method your goal is going to be focused on always dpsing down these pillars before worrying about dealing damage on the octahedron. While dpsing down the pillars you will be avoiding attacks from the cube, but once they are all down you can go into a normal avoid and burn rotation like you have with the other cubes. The challenge there however is that they are going to be summoned multiple times during the fight, meaning it becomes a real slog to chew through them each time before you can make progress on the boss.
The Bel Way
I bring a couple of ranged damage dealers with fast attacks… more specifically I bring Venti and Amber and potentially Fischl. There are various points during the fight where the octahedron will be exposed at the top of the pillars, and when this is going on I am burning as hard as I can with my bow users. The only real danger that you run into is there will be an attack that summons a huge area effect around each of the pillars, and if all five are up it essentially blankets the arena. However remember that thing I said about Electo Cube, that you could ring out the effects? It works here as well if you are fast enough, you can just step outside of the ring area and wait until the earthquake phase is over. Then I return on slowly whittling down the octahedron until I can enter the final burn phase.
Final Burn Phase
Regardless of which method you used to whittle down the health, the final phase is going to involve three more pillars spawning around the center of the arena. These pillars have significantly less health than the normal constructs but you still realistically want probably a claymore wielder to help you burn through them. These will also be weak to earth magic as well, so if you have someone along those lines that will help significantly. Same song and dance as before in that any of these smaller pillars that you don’t manage to take out will heal up the boss a percentage of their health. You really want to one phase this if possible because it just takes so long to chew through the earlier slog to get to this point.
The Flower Family
Another type of elite boss that shares a good number of mechanics is what I call the flower family. Technically the game refers to them as “Regisvine” but when I talk about them they are general the Ice and Fire Flowers. They each are capable of doing a bunch of nonsense that progressively becomes harder as the fight goes on, but they also each have a critical weakness. If you focus on the weak spot during each phase of the fight the flower will slump over to the ground giving you a rather large unimpeded burn phase. There is no “final burn phase” for this family, just kill the weak spot and get free dps until you have managed to drop their health bar to zero.
I’ve marked a region on the image above with a red circle. When the fight begins those leaves will peel back revealing a bud of sorts, and this is the weak spot that you are going to need to dps down in order to begin the first free damage/burn phase. Given that it is ice the champions that are going to deal the most damage in my experience are Fire and Lightning. Generally speaking I swap to Xiangling and drop Gubao and swap to my Razor to wail away at the bud until the flower drops. After the burn phase the weak spot will switch to being the head of the flower, which is a bit challenging for melee to hit. If you brought amber it is often times a good idea to hang back and break the head of the flower with elemental attacks which will once again cause it to slump over when broken and trigger another free damage phase. If for some reason you need to three phase the encounter, it will begin alternating between bud and head phases until you have killed the boss.
The key for me to this fight is to burn it as fast as you can, so bring elements that interact with ice in a manner that increases your dps so that you can one or two phase it. The longer the fight goes the higher the likelihood that you end up getting frozen and taking a truly ridiculous amount of damage. One of the phases involves a frost beam that shoots out of the head of the flower and will sweep the room dealing significant damage. You can in theory use your invulnerability frames to clip through this beam and avoid taking damage. My general advice is burn hard and fast and get the fight over as soon as you can.
Same song and dance as with fire, the “bud” is marked with the circle in the above image and you will want to burn this hard as soon as the fight starts. If you have Barbara she is the MVP if this fight and she seems to be able to drop the fire flower as fast as anyone can while also healing the hell out of your party. Xingqiu is also a champ, especially if you have his ultimate up. If you don’t have a good water champion then your best bet is to either rely on the reactions with ice or lightning to get through it. I tend to break with Barbara and then swap over to a claymore champion like Razor for dealing damage to the slumped over flower. Same phases apply for fire as they did for ice in that you burn the bud, dps the slumped flower, burn the head, dps the slumped flower and then it repeats the pattern.
Once again the key to this fight is to get in and burn fast so that you don’t have to deal with the later phases. One of these involves fire to rain down from the sky putting puddles under your characters that you constantly have to keep dodging out of. There are patterns for avoiding this if you search online, but really… just abuse your elemental reactions and get through the encounter fast. A severely under leveled Barbara is likely going to beat anyone else at this fight, so legitimately if you have her take her with you for this encounter.
Oceanid – Water Ring Encounter
Region – Liyue
Closest Port – Bishui Plain
Ascension Characters – Barbara, Mona, Xingqiu
Now for the fight that I find myself enjoying the least, because it is also quite possibly the strangest. In order to get here you have to swing out to a stone platform, which in itself is made up of a bunch of smaller platforms. There will be no visible boss at first, but instead a different colored puddle of water that I have marked with a circle in the above image. To begin the fight you need to just walk over to the puddle. This fight is what is referred to as a “Ring Encounter” in MMORPG terms and while there is a large boss visible flying around you can’t actually deal any damage to it. Instead you will be fighting a series of summoned water constructs that take various animal forms. Each wave of animals is going to have slightly different mechanics, but the important thing is that you focus your dps on them and take them out. Each time a wave dies it will deal a certain amount of damage to the boss, and this ultimately how you whittle down its health bar.
After two waves of adds the second aspect of the encounter begins to kick in. The boss will choose two platforms and these will begin to sink reducing the total safe area for you to be fighting on. You can’t deal any damage while you are in the water, but the constructs can absolutely deal damage to you. You need to keep burning the waves of adds and moving to safe platforms until you ultimately have dropped the boss to zero. While I have never got close to this, I am guessing the soft enrage for the encounter is when you run out of ground to stand on. Ultimately you want to use whatever characters you have with a strong reaction to water. I tend to focus on Lightning and Ice here, with Fire being a deep third that I am only using for passive damage increases.
Final Thoughts
I hope this helps someone out there gain some confidence to start taking these elites down solo. They really are not that difficult once you understand the mechanics and so long as you are mindful of your elemental reactions. If you have any specific questions I am more than happy to answer them in the comments below. I am going to try and remember to keep this post updated as new regions of the game open and with them new boss encounters.
The post Genshin Elite Bosses appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Last night the Genshin Impact servers went down for maintenance, and after my fourth night of failed attempts at the horseman mount I found myself a little listless. I attempted to log into Destiny 2 and flew into the tower and then pretty much logged right back out again. Not sure what to do I opted to test the new player experience that went into World of Warcraft with the Shadowlands pre-patch. Instead of starting in the original starter zone, new characters can choose to instead begin on Exiles Reach. I believe this works for any character that is not an Allied Race, given that those appear to still go through the original racial starter experience.
I have some friends on Wyrmrest Accord, and as such I opted to create a clone of the original Belghast over there. From what I understand the flow of the content is effectively the same on both Horde and Alliance. You start with some cinematics laying out the mission before you of trying to find an expedition that has gone missing. While ship side your team similarly encounters issues and finds themselves shipwrecked on an island… conveniently the same island that the earlier expedition shipwrecked on.
Across the board the experience feels like a much more streamlined and simplified version of something like the Ghostlands or Azuremyst Isle. Everything is very self contained and neatly divided into areas that you will only actually go through once as you traverse the island. Along the way you will meet characters that I am certain you will never see again during your entire time in World of Warcraft. That aspect is a little disappointing, but Blizzard might prove me wrong and integrate Captain Garrick for example into future content. You however go through a sequence of events that see you rescuing most of the original expedition and figuring out the central conflict of the island.
A group of Ogres has apparently set up on this island and is trying to use necromancy to resurrect some dragon. I mean it is a generic set up, but also sorta awesome because we have not really seen much from the ogres since Draenor. This is an expert reuse of a bunch of models that had not seen the light of day since the Warlords expansion. Additionally the necromantic dragon seems to be an asset flip of Nythendra from the Emerald Nightmare raid, but similarly it was a cool model and deserved to be reused. Everything though flows together nicely and ends up being a much quicker starter experience than what I remember from the other zone options.
The culmination of the starter experience is a dungeon… but one where the NPCs serve as the tank and the healer and everyone is just effectively following them around and DPSing. I am not going to lie… I would not mind if they did some more of these dungeons for leveling purposes because it didn’t feel horrible. I almost wonder if this is an attempt at them playing with the concept of being able to run dungeons with NPCs much like they have with the Trust system in FFXIV. So far the experiment seems to have worked however because it was a pretty solid experience. I got zero loot from the dungeon but I did watch as other players got things… so maybe spend some time evening that out a bit. It would feel better if everyone exited the dungeon with a shiny blue.
Upon exiting the island you go through an entire sequence where you are introduced to Stormwind, and welcomed back as a hero of the Alliance. This is nice especially since it leads you through some of the important things like binding at an Inn. It also gives you access to your first mount, setting you up to start the game proper. The quests all appear to take place in the Old Town area, which is fine… but everyone knows the Dwarven Quarter is the only good part of Stormwind. I could definitely see this being a good introduction to World of Warcraft for a brand new player.
What felt really odd was that the game immediately went into the Battle for Azeroth content without me really choosing it. I guess as a brand new player this would flow nicely, but I kinda wanted to poke around with the Chromie system. Right now I am rolling with it because it seems like the BFA systems have been modified slightly as well to accommodate a brand new level 10 character. For example I didn’t get to choose which area of Kul Tiras that I wanted to start in, but instead was only given the option of Tirangarde Sound. I never really got into the BFA content for Alliance and maybe playing on a fresh character on a server I have no presence on… would make it feel more meaningful?
I like the experience that is presented here, but I also sorta think it is wasted if Blizzard does not make some fundamental changes to the way that World of Warcraft works. This is an experience ideally designed for someone who has never played this game. I just feel like at this point that if you have owned a PC capable of gaming, that more than likely you have already had access to World of Warcraft. With the introduction of controllers to the game on an official level, it is time for Blizzard to roll this game out to the console players and maybe to mobile players as well. In both cases I think it would work best if they shifted from the subscription only to offering some sort of free to play track as well.
However for the purpose of this post… the experience of Exiles Reach is good. I would probably run new characters through it… were it not for the fact that I already have a stratified army of one of each Alliance and Horde class that are at a minimum of level 40 in the new squished system. I’m already at the point where I have way more racial options than I have classes to play them with, and I think maybe it was a bad idea to not allow the Allied Races to go through the Exiles Reach starter experience. Have you played through the new starter zone? Drop me your thoughts down below in the comments.
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Yesterday we got the first new set of banners in Genshin Impact and the introduction of the new character Klee. Some of you may be far enough in the story and leveling process to have been able to embark upon a side mission involving this character. She is adorable and she likes to blow things up and calls herself a “Spark Knight”. She also has a really cool ability in that she shows nearby resources unique to Mondstadt region on your minimap. Also on the banner are increased pull rates for Sucrose, Noelle and what has become one of my favorite champions on my alt account Xingqiu.
As was the case with Venti, you can go into the events section and complete a test run with Klee worth 20 free primagems. I highly suggest doing this because she is definitely an acquired taste, and is not super supporty of your other characters. Xiangling for example is amazing because you can swap over, drop Guoba or pop Pyronado and then swap back to your main carry and get the benefit of those attacks. Klee on the other hand is best served when she is on the field and actively engaged with the mobs because of how many bombs she can throw out in such a short amount of time. So like I said before you go chasing her I would highly suggest to make sure you enjoy that play style.
Chasing a 5 Star Champion is the path of madness. What I actually wanted instead was a copy of Xingqiu because while I use him as my carry on the alt account, I noticed he could be built to be a phenomenal support healer. Ultimately I have been lacking for a solid healer for team two, and as a result I have been trying to figure out how to try and name Ningguang or Noelle play that role. When I found out that Xingqiu was one of the rate up 4 stars on the banner, I had hopes that I would eventually pull him through spending random wishes here and there.
I had been stockpiling my primagems knowing that we would get a new banner soon, and with that I added a $50 gem pack to give me some additional pulls and hopefully increase my chances of getting a Xingqiu. Of note I’ve made any purchases related to this game, the $5 90 primagems a day thing and the battlepass through Google Play because I trust that payment vehicle considerably more than I trust the sketchy pay options that the Windows client has by default. I found out that through Google Play I apparently had quite a few “Play Points” I am guessing from subscribing to Google Music for awhile. I was able to convert 150 of these into a $3 off coupon for Genshin Impact blunting the cost a little bit. This ultimately gave me four 10 pulls and then an assortment of single pulls that I had stockpiled from saving up my daily primagems.
My very first pull… I got a Klee and a Noelle… so yeah that is a way to start off an evening. Second pull I ended up nabbing a second copy of Fischl unlocking her really good constellation. The third pull I managed to get what I was after from the start and picked up Xingqiu, and then the fourth and last ten pull was another copy of Sucrose unlocking her first constellation. I legitimately could not have expected better luck out of that sequence of events. I was super pumped about getting Xingqiu who I was chasing as well as a copy of Klee to play with, and was left with a few single wishes that I opted to go against the banner as well hoping maybe just maybe I would get a second copy of Xing.
On the very last single pull of the night… I saw a gold streak across the sky. Of all of the five star champions… the one I have wanted the most is Diluc just like everyone else. However the one that is most useful to my team composition is easily Qiqi. She is both a healer and applies cryo debuffs… meaning that she could in theory if built correctly replace both Kaeya and Barbara in my main team composition. Sometimes you get what you need… and my phenomenal luck sent me a tiny adorable zombie friend. Now I am going through the process of struggling to catch her up so that she can join my main team.
I have a lot of catching up to do, but right now my main team comp is looking a little like this. Razor my adorable wolf boy is still leading the pack. Xingqiu is riding shotgun for his super useful abilities that transfer back to razor allowing me to apply wet and shock the living shit out of things. Xiangling is my girl and she will always hang out in the third slot for providing a flamey bear and pyronado. Leading out the pack is Qiqi my healer and right now my jam is applying the E for both her and Xingqiu at the same time and freezing targets before shocking them.
So far what I am building out for my second team is Beidou as my carry, because she is mighty powerful on her own, but when buffed with my best healer I think she will be significantly more durable. In order to add some effects I am throwing in Klee and Kaeya but I am not entirely certain how well that is going to work for the time being. I need to figure out just how viable Klee is in a support role. Because of the way that Beidou works, in theory I could have her support Klee if I could max her out. I have so much grinding ahead of me to try and get the materials in order to catch my tribe of character up.
Remember friends. I had some really good luck. This is a trap, and you are likely not going to have good luck as well. Make sure if you go chasing Klee or any character for that matter… that you do so in a responsible manner. There are way too many YouTubers with $5000, $7000 or $15000 Genshin Impact accounts. You however won’t have a sponsor that is willing to foot that bill.
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