3 weeks in (with the first major update just a few days away), I’ve also managed to clear most of the existing content including Simulated Universe World 6 (Difficulty 1). The thing I need to work on now is building up some other characters so that I have a second team for Forgotten Hall 11-15 (similar to Genshin Impact’s Spiral Abyss from floor 5 onwards, you need a team of different characters for each half of Forgotten Hall 11-15).
I also managed to get Seele’s Light Cone on the “weapon” banner around 70 pulls in (in Genshin, I never pulled on the weapon banner since I prioritized the characters I wanted). When I look at my account now, if I hadn’t pulled Seele early on, I doubt I would be as engaged with the game over this initial 3 week period.
I also finally pulled my 3rd 5-star character (Himeko) on the standard banner and will be building her for my second team. Right now, the largest constraint is resources (XP books, ascension materials, Trace mats, etc). My primary team right now is the Trailblazer (Fire), Sushang, Natasha, and Seele. I used this team to clear Simulated Universe 4-6 (4-5 utilizing The Hunt resonance while 6, I used Abundance and mostly auto battled the fight). The Abundance path is actually OP since you can get consistent healing, ability to remove debuffs, and a buff to DEF. The main character trailblazer was also crucial since it is able to provide shielding (in addition to the shields I selected from some Preservation cards), taunt and tank a lot of damage in the process. Natasha (healer) was wiped in the final phase (with Cocolia under 37%) but I got the necessary healing from the Abundance path of resonance to close out the fight.
Note: This was with a lot of 3/4-star relics that aren’t optimal (relic quality, properties [subject to RNG], and level add a lot of power/defense mitigation to a character), nor fully leveled (without a lot of swiping, relics are currently the most resource intensive to level up at this point in the game; like Genshin, you eventually accumulate enough fodder pieces for leveling up the better ones; I have only a few 5-star pieces and those are really “costly” to get leveled up at this time). This is fine for difficulty 1, but as you push difficulty levels at higher Equilibrium (world) levels, 5-stars with the optimal properties fpr each character is going to matter.
I will say the turn based combat is beginning to grow on me primarily because with most fights, I can set it for auto and farm for materials that way (while I do something else). It’s a feature that makes casual game play even better since I can pay attention to other things while farming materials. The fact that I am still playing this 3 weeks in, signifies a win for miHoYo (because yes, I am now curious to see how the story progresses).
UPDATE: Due to how well the healing/defense buff worked with the Abundance path, I switched out Natasha with Bronya (for her damage/crit/speed buffs), and that shortened the boss fight by over 3 minutes.
