I am back once more

And with a sad attempt at trying to write more in the year 2019, I have finally decided, whether people get it or don't, to write about the games I have been sucked into for the past two years. We're here to talk about the current goings on in all the gacha I play, any upcoming news that makes it my way about these games, and talk about future releases of these types of games... so I give to you the reader of this blog:

So to begin with this edition of the 10 pull, we'll look into the game that has been updated the most recent with...

Azur Lane: January 10th-31st

So Azur Lane is in this really weird position compared to a ton of other mobages that have come out over here. Case in point if you compare FGO NA to JP, the game runs as if NA was a classic progressive server. Azur Lane is this really weird hybrid where we very much had a starting point but Yongshi has been hard at work to speed up the NA content roll out by releasing stuff way ahead of time with a lot of QoL features still missing from the game.

Crimson Echoes is an incredibly recent event in other regions as well as our own, where as you can compare previous events such as Divergent Chessboard, which was an event run well ahead of us even getting the game last year. Regardless I really enjoy the fact that Yongshi is very much aware of the kind of lag there can be with situations like that and for the most part have given us a nice boost in terms of available ships to build off the bat, and things to... spend money on if we so wish.

Crimson Echoes is an event based around the Sakura Empire, and serves as some sort of prequel story explaining the past of Kaga, Akagi and Amagi. Amagi first appears as a limited time buildable ship with this event, along with a couple other elite and rare ships. Kaga also gets a Battleship variant you can totally spend wisdom cubes to get. Don't actually pull for her in the limited time build, shes available in the event shop if you manage to do the event long enough. The only downside to Azur Lane events is honestly they last for either too little a time (which are all the silly events that don't have content to them such as some of the ones running now like the New Years login or the fortune pulling new years event), or they take up an entire month. Yet in the long run it only makes sense to run these events for so long because of the lack of shop currency you get in these types of events. Divergent Chessboard was also like this. I much prefer the lottery events where you trade in currency to roll for useful items out of a item pool like the Fallen Wings event. Mostly because almost every item you get in Azur Lane is insanely useful.

DOES IT MAKE SENSE TO START PLAYING THIS GAME NOW:

Yes, there will never be a bad time to start playing Azur Lane, you lose access to ships at the current moment such as all the Iron Blood boats and the Eagle Union ones that came out in the last couple of months, BUT the meta pretty much stands on the ships that have been available in the game since day one. At the end of the day its a collectathon game for ships that you like, and progress in the game at your leisure.

WHATS NEXT FOR AZUR LANE:

I dunno, lol. Okay for real though theres a ton of events they could rerun but it seems like they're getting pretty close to just releasing new events along side our region so its a mystery at this point. We will eventually get the ability to level our ships past the 100lvl limit to accommodate the CRUSHINGLY DIFFICULT SINGLE PLAYER CHAPTERS past chapter 8.

GRANBLUE FANTASY, JANUARY 9th-15th

So Granblue Fantasy is pretty much day and date in all regions, you just play whatever is new to the client the same as JP. The only reason why the US has access to this game in english is because the Southseas Asia market. The current event going on in Granblue is a rerun event of a two year old event Table for Six, which is a sequel to the L.E.T.S. H.A.N.G. event, that can be found in the games relatively still new Side Story feature. (Fun Fact, Let's Hang was actually the very event Cygames even decided to translate to english, it served as a test and thanks to that test the rest of the game is translated, and maybe in the far off future see a Steam release due to surveys asking for opinions on how to finally officially bring it to the US).

Table For Six is pretty much a gag event about a bunch of Gag characters (Aside from Korwa who when I started playing was one of the most broken characters available), sharing fantasies about love, school life, and... espionage. You get introduced to the meme squad that is Lowain and his friends and of course the mechanization of one of the story's main characters... (who is now both available in the game as a character, and as a summon.)

I'm... not going to lie this event is pretty much for new players to get their hands on some items to help them boost their own abilities to get stuff in the actual game, I on the otherhand only do reruns to grab single draw tickets and delicious damascus crystals, which are used to uncap weapons without spending hard cash. The Summon is... terrible, and the dagger is decent, even I used it when I started playing Wind. You also get a shiny SR event character Sutera, who is actually pretty useful for new fire players who are lacking in usable characters (an 8.0 on the gamewith tier list if you are into those kinds of numbers).

IS IT A GOOD IDEA TO START PLAYING GRANBLUE FANTASY NOW:

LOADED QUESTION. It is never a good idea to start playing Granblue Fantasy (so why am I even writing about it). THE SMART ANSWER IS: No, in the grand scheme of things to start playing right now? You totally could, in fact I'm not even going to tell you that you missed getting about $900 in USD of free rolls on the Gacha for the BIGGEST celebration of the year... oh wait.

Yeah, that totally happened, but the good news! It will be happening again to celebrate the game's 5th anniversary at the end of February! We'll get a roulette wheel to spin with thousands of rolls to give out to every single player whether they be one 10 roll or ten 10 rolls! The only advice I would give to you is... don't actually start playing until the game is officially celebrating the anniversary. It is a future investment towards a thing called your "Start Dash"... but in the end that might not matter because that will cost you some money, but in return you might get a Start Dash so invaluable to your account that it MIGHT make spending 3000 yen through Paypal make sense.

The realistic answer is: Yes, if you start playing now, they will keep giving out stuff like this if you stay committed long enough so, its not really anything to worry about. The game is an insane timesink, its whatever you want to put into it.

WHAT IS NEXT ON GRANBLUE FANTASY:

Specifically after Table for Six, of course, is Guild Wars. We however call it in english "Unite and Fight". It is essentially an event dedicated to people who start crews to fight other crews. How do you ask? By seeing who the fug can nuke a boss faster and more efficiently than the other team. Unite and Fight offers neat and almost mandatory rewards such as Guild War weapons that have insane power spikes for new players and also access to future investments known as the "Eternals". The Eternals are super timesink SSR characters you can only get by upgrading their specific Guild Wars weapon. You can only obtain these weapons during this event. If you were to start now and manage to get into a crew to leech these rewards, the best one to start with is a dagger.

Dragalia Lost, January 10th-15th

HA HA I HAVE PLAYED YOU FOR A FOOL. Dragalia Lost has no current event up. Dragalia Lost unlike its cousin Granblue Fantasy, doesn't have a new event ready after the next one concludes a day before. Right now the only thing really going on is a thing called Dragalia Gala, or what we would like to meme into existence "DraGala".

Dragalia Gala is essentially a summon banner that has increased rate ups on getting 5* Characters, Dragons and Craft Essences "Wyrmprints". It also will feature a PREMIUM character from the main story that can only be obtainable with this bimonthly banner. Sarisse is the first one of these Gala characters... and honestly powercreeps about half of the fire characters and nearly ALL BOW USERS... We're only four months into this game folks...

So if there's no event than what did I miss:

A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LIMITED BANNER THAT ALREADY BANKRUPTED US BEFORE DRAGALIA GALA!

So usually the banner summons ARE included with its own baked in event, Eastern Emissaries was what is known as a "Raid" Event, where you and three other people get together to hit a health sponge until it dies and drops loot. However in this event since it was a New Years event, gave out INSANE REWARDS such as and not limited to free summon tickets for the gacha, and uncap items for weapons (which are near impossible to obtain in the game at the current moment) and keys to uncap... "Wyrmprints". HOWEVER these drops were incredibly rare and even some unlucky people didn't see a single key fragment drop (BUT NOT ME I GOT A FULL KEY... AND 8 TICKETS). It was also hurt by the fact the way to even proc the chance to have these items dropped were bugged for the entire event, and could not be fixed before the event ended... So yeah, they gave out compensation to everyone who participated eventually but in the grand scheme of thing it sucked real hard.

THE SUMMONING BANNER ITSELF HOWEVER. Nearly everything on the banner, was an asset to get. The new 5* Shadow character Ieyasu is probably the most broken character in the game as of the current moment thanks to his character specific mechanic being broken and power creeping all other DoT ailment effects, not only that but every character that wasn't Ieyasu on the banner ALSO had this effect. Even the DRAGON ITSELF has this effect, which was the only thing I didn't get. I normally wouldn't be upset about this because hey, gacha is gacha... except that these characters and the dragon that dark desperately needed... are limited to new years events... meaning if you wanted a 60% attack up dragon for shadow, sorry. Needed the best character in the game? Nah he's gone for the year. Meanwhile Shadow's character pool pre-Emissaries is pitiful, with its sole 5* character being very low on the tier list due to the fact... she uses a bow.

YOU SEEM RATHER DOWN ON THIS GAME, SHOULD I SKIP IT:

... No, mostly because almost all of the games salt and shortcomings are either fixed, or compensated well for frustrations, and the fact remains that this might be the best playing one of these out of... all of them I've played so far. If you don't get lucky with characters then you can always promote 3* characters to be 5*s themselves and a lot of them are actually that damn good. A lot of the 4* dragons are actually insanely useful, and you will never be barred out of doing any content... mostly all content. The current endgame which are the High Dragons are "Pay to Participate". Unless you were insanely lucky and pulled exactly all the 5* dragon copies you needed along with a viable character for those fights... you are going to end up spending some dosh to get there. For the record though they are trying to fix that gap a bit, they give wyrmrite out the ass and constantly screw stuff up that nets you summon tickets and things to help you progress through the game further.

IF THEY FUCK UP ANOTHER EVENT THOUGH I DON'T KNOW.

At any point they will be adding for new players as of now a free 5* character voucher, so if you really want to reroll an account in this game, it just go a whole ton easier.

WHATS NEXT ON DRAGALIA LOST:

OUR THIRD LIGHT EVENT IN 4 MONTHS! (SHADOW WAS JUST LUCKY ENOUGH TO GET ONE RECENTLY).

It is known as a "Facility Event", these events are used to help boost up your Halidom Castle level (I forgot to mention there is a facebook village game in this game that is mandatory for progression). It will also boost attributes of all light characters by about 8% when maxed out and during the event makes it so you do damage to event mobs by an insane amount. These are arguably the more important events to invest in because of the free 30 halidom levels and free stat boosts to element characters. (Its also circus themed for people who are... into the circus).

FATE/GRAND ORDER (NA) January 9th-23rd

FGO is the only game on this list that you can actually predict what's going to happen mainly because of what was stated in the Azur Lane bit. FGO NA is for all intent and purposes... the classic progressive server. From what I understand only a couple of summon rate ups have been swapped around, and maybe an event or two was cleaned up for NA's release because they were kinda bullshit and not fun. However it's pretty much day and date with JP's release schedule... as of two years in the past. That means when your cool friends who all play JP are doing these awesome events and all these Quality of Life improvements... you have to remind yourself that it's literally a two year wait for the servants you want or the events you want to do.

CURRENTLY going on in NA is the very first appearance of a character that shows up in Chapter 6 of Camelot and Chapter 7 of Babylon, "First Hassan" (or as the story and everyone else calls him King Hassan). You can spend your saints quartz to roll him... or spend all of them not to get him, entirely up to you. When you do end up failing to get him the other thing going on is the 1/2 off training grounds event you can use to level up the Hassan you WOULD have gotten (unless you did get him then GOOD, GOOD FOR YOU). Other than that FGO has nothing of interest going on to players caught up on the story...

Well if I missed the la-:

AGAIN, from my understanding there have only been really like two events that happened in the first year of the game that have never happened again. One of them being the Magical Girl event that brought in Fate/Kaleid's characters into the game (One of them more limited than the other), and the Solomon Singularity raid event.

The Solomon Singularity raid event was essentially a huge launch for the final chapter of the original part one of FGO's main story that concluded everything for that story arc. Players "teamed" up to take down these massive healthbars known as Demonic Pillars to unlock cutscenes and progress to the final boss of the game at that current moment in time. You could only participate in this event if you had cleared the story up to Babylon and actually had the power to do any damage to the bosses (assuming you did because how did you even beat Babylon, or for that matter get past Gawain in chapter 6). Each demon pillar offered its own rare materials used to enhance servants, meaning one of them got instantly fucked (Barbatos) because he dropped the most coveted material in the game (Heart of the Foreign God). He didn't even last 8 hours.

This event also marked the first time you could obtain Merlin, who ushered in a new style of play that made everyone go insane for buster crit teams. (He's essentially the white whale of the game for us until certain other servants come out that buff other card types in the same way). I rolled 6 times for him and spent about 20 tickets. I'm dead inside.

You missed the chance to kill the pillars with everyone but the singularity is still mandatory for completion, you can still beat all the pillars on your own as one shot fights and still get like 7 summon tickets, but boy if you need Foreign God Hearts later on down the road... you missed this one golden opportunity.

You also don't seem to high on this on-:

If you like the Fate franchise, its worth playing. I didn't and I still think its worth playing... (even if this game has screwed me over 17 times in a row with 5* cards going the way of CEs and not servants) It's a single player game, whatever you get on your account will not hurt or hinder your ability to play the game to completion, it just... will require you to brain harder, and maybe make good friends with a whale who has a max bonded Heracles, a Waver, and a Merlin. (Yes you will actually need to friend the person to make them useful you can't use them fully otherwise... its really dumb). Rerolling is a pain in the ass so I just recommend you say fug it and go in with whatever you get. (I'm not a qualified Fate Grand/Order player to recommend this way of play all I can say is I finished the last singularity with only one 5* servant to my name).

WHAT'S NEXT FOR FATE:

If the event list is to be believed (which theres no reason not to since, again classic progressive server), this event with Orion and Artemis will be the next event. It's a rerun, I haven't played it originally so... I hope there's a lot of summon currency I can hoard until summer. Shoud be... great.

Orion will also probably be on rate up for some reason.

Alright so this is getting pretty long in the tooth so one News Bit

Another Eden is a single player gacha game that has managed to escape from its home region and will be arriving to us, the United States, later this month. It is being helmed by the writer of Chrono Trigger, and we all know how well having a famous writer of videogames works out for single player gacha games, (Is Sino Alice still around?). Anyway I was actually curious about this one mostly because I have tried worse gacha games with even less going on for them... No I will not write about Epic Seven today.

There's also a pre-registration campaign going on if you were interested in trying out the game, you just have to go to the app store of your respected platform and hit the pre-order button (atleast that's how it works on iOS). It costs no money, and if you're lucky never will... or are smart enough to never get into these games. If they hit enough pre-registers then you will get a free 4* character, which I can only assume if it doesn't hit the 150,000 mark then they give her out anyway because why wouldn't they.

There's a lot of snark in this news bit, why so-:

I'm just gonna cut you off there, I am genuinely interested in the game I'll try any of them but I am someone who is somewhat invested in three of the games above and forever shackled to Granblue. I guess worse case scenario the game has a story I can complete like Fate and I only have to pay attention to it when new story stuff gets added. Also like I love Frog and there's a Frog in this game. I tend to always snark around new releases, I mean you should have seen me on the pre-release of Dragalia... and look at how passionate I am about that game now.

So would you recommend this game?

I'll recommend anything you want me to, but yeah it seems neat, if you have the time of course.

The Last Bits of your 10 Pull

• I have played tiny bits of Girls Frontline, I don't know enough about it to say anything about it. Azur Lane kinda fits the mold of that game though so.
• I played a big chunk of Danmachi but quit after assembling a pretty bullshit team and also pulled all the Kino's Journey characters... Game is too generous and that's a bad thing
• I hear Fire Emblem is alot better, it was really disappointing to me when it came out but I'm probably not gonna get back into it
• The SMT game literally just came and went, barely played any of it but it was a real good looking game, maybe even the Crysis of Gacha Games
• ... lol Destiny Child. (avoided for very specific reasons)

And that about wraps it up for this edition of the Premium 10 Pull. If you managed to read all the way down here from start to finish I thank you, and wonder how you got this far as well. Heck even I'm shocked I got down here.

Whether I continue this as a weekly thing, monthly... biweekly thing, is yet to be seen but I seem pretty high up on the recapping of all this. The four games mentioned above will be my main focuses maybe even more pop up along the way (Gosh I hope not, I need to finish real games). Stay tuned.