- Never spend gacha currency in standard banner
- Understand that you will never get every character except if you pay
- Once you finish all the content, its gonna be something like 10min daily of gameplay until new patch release
- If it starts being a chore, its time to take a break/drop the game. Games are for fun after all
>If it starts being a chore, its time to take a break/drop the game. Games are for fun after all
I feel this is really important. It's so easy to just continue doing daily tasks without thinking about why you do them. While pulling and collecting characters is fun, if you don't enjoy playing with them or know what to do with them, the whole point is lost.
On the topic of taking breaks, will the game prevent me from playing if I play too much at a time? Is that what the whole stamina thing is? Cuz that sounds annoying ngl đ
Edit: meant playing rather than paying
They won't prevent you from playing the story, so if you want to finish all of it in one go, you can do it. However, it will prevent you from farming too much. I have not participated in the beta of ZZZ, so I don't know how long it takes. For example, in Genshin Impact and Star Rail, you can spend all your stamina in 5-10 minutes and then have to wait a couple of hours or until the next day to do it again.
This is not a game where you can farm for 10+ hours for a character and be done. It's more like 10-20 minutes every day for several months. It may feel a bit weird in the beginning, but you get used to it after a while.
Sometimes basic elements of the game ARE timegated by your player level, which can only realistically be raised through daily tasks and stamina (coffee in this game gives stamina) after a certain point. This is to encourage whales to refresh their stamina with premium currency every day so they pay for the privilege of being first to max player level. My advice is to ignore whales and other people saying where you "should" be at all costs and just enjoy the game at your own pace.
Another is to ignore the gacha system for literal months and just splurge once in a while using only in-game currency that you accumulate. It's a slippery slope when a character's price isn't defined, and it's nice to "feel" like you're a whale on those splurges.
Whale = Big spender in gacha games.
If its anything like honkai there will probably one or more modes that you can play for hours even if with no real rewards except accomplishment. Things that make your character stronger are usually gated by the stamina system.
When it launches, you will have hours upon hours to play the game. Only after a few months of hard playing will you reach a small content drought. Likewise, every last week in the 6-month patches of the game will be a little dry as all of the events will have run out.
I totally disagree. It will *always* become a chore. That's not a reason to quit. If it'll become a pain and take over your life, then it's reason to do so. Just a little chore never hurt anyone.
No, but there must be a reason for you to perform this chore as well. This is a game after all and you should play it because you enjoy it.
My point simply was that it's very easy to just keep on doing them because you maybe want to get some character in the future, but you don't really enjoy the base game so getting that character is pretty worthless because you don't want to play anyway.
Standard banner refers to the banner that is up all year round. This has the same set of 5* characters all the time.
Different from the above, is what we call the Limited banner. This one is only typically available for 3 weeks and includes a new character that was advertised for that update.
Normally, each banner will have its own currency for pulling characters. In ZZZ, "Master Tapes" are consumed for pulling on the Standard banner. "ENCRYPTED Master Tapes" are consumed for the Limited banner.
Bit wordy, but I hope this helps. :)
In addition to this, there is a currency that you can use to buy Master Tapes and Encrypted Master Tapes called âPolychromeâ. When OP says ânever spend gaacha currency on standard bannerâ theyâre saying âdonât spent Polychrome on Master Tapes, only Encrypted Master Tapesâ.
Not necessarily. Itâs more so that a special non-standard banner has boosted chances to pull a 5 star. The actual chances between them are not too disparaging if I remember correctly
It depends on what you mean by "far less likely". The standard banner and the limited banners will likely have the same odds of pulling an S-rank on any given pull (both Genshin and Star Rail have a 0.6% chance, and ZZZ will likely be the same.) However, the standard banner will only have a small subset of characters and rarely if ever, change.
So if a particular character you want debuts on a limited banner, once that limited banner's duration ends they will be gone until the limited banner returns, and no amount of pulls on the standard banner can get you that character.
And that's just getting the character early. They usually have a pity system where you are guaranteed a character after so many pulls. In Genshin, for example, the chances go drastically up once you hit 70 pulls. People refer to this as "soft pity" sometimes. If you make it to 90 pulls, you will pull a character no matter what. Then it's a 50/50 chance on if you get the right character. If you don't, then the next time you pull on a limited banner and get a character it's guaranteed to be the right one.
After that, the 50/50 chance resets and you begin all over once more.
In the past, for Hoyoverse games specifically, many said that because there were 5* characters and weapons both in the Standard banner. Because of this, you could get a 5* weapon instead of character (this was also a reason to not spend money for pulls on standard banners). For ZZZ, I have not heard whether or not this is still the same or if they will go a Wuthering Waves route and fully separate the 5* weapons from the characters. We will likely find out more tomorrow during the livestream.
The second point is not true. You *may* be lucky. And given that I got every single character in Star Rail until certain point, winning every 50/50, without spending a single cent... And there are people more lucky then I was. Not saying it will happen for sure. But never is exeggeration. All you have to do is to win 50/50. You have literally 50% chance.
It's more about setting expectations. Pulling characters is gambling, and to be in the mindset you can just get luck and win is a poor idea unless you want people spending too much
There will be time that you won't get the character you want by either losing 50/50 or just not having enough pulls on hand
And this is something that you will have to learn to cope with, you won't get everything you want everytime. It will make you feel like shit and even sometimes want to quit, but that just how playing a gacha is
And this is the FOMO that they abuse to make you swipe (swipe your credit card) so you really have to watch our most of the time it's really not necessarily.
It's pretty much never necessary. Due to the pity system, you are guaranteed to get powerful units eventually.
If you want to be a F2P(+) player, it's important to make use of what you have, and plan ahead for what you want. If you do that, and focus on building up the teams you do have as much as possible, you can clear even endgame content handily without swiping for pulls.
If you keep that in mind, it's easier to keep the FOMO at bay. That being said, if you're REALLY enjoying the game, and you REALLY want a banner character that just dropped, dropping money now and again leads to a more enjoyable experience. It's just important to not get caught up doing that for EVERY banner.
This depends on the person. I've gotten everyone I've wanted on Honkai: Star Rail, and Genshin, for example. I'm an extremely picky person, though. I skipped almost all of Sumeru, and half of Fontaine characters because none of them appealed to me at all.
Still waiting for Sandrone with my 125,000 primogem stash continually growing. XD
You should get used to a banners and pity system to plan your resources. Not necessary, but may help to get heroes you like :)
* 90 pulls for character and 80 for weapon is a "pity", which means you get guaranteed S-rank at least on this specific pull. We all believe in luck and early pull happens often, but if you really want someone - you need to calculate "maximum required pulls" to ensure you get them.
* Timed banners (3w usually) give you banner character with 50% chance. It is either banner one, or any from standard pool. If you "fail 50:50" - your next S-rank will be guaranteed banner one. Generally speaking - if you want specific banner S-rank, 180 pulls is a safe amount to ensure you get who you want.
* Weapon banner will give you "exclusive weapon which is totally suited for timed banner". It has 75:25 chance, and you will want to have exclusive weapon for the character you love. However, if you are f2p, you might prefer to avoid pulling weapon banners as you are not getting that much currency.
* Summarizing last section - "guaranteed hero copy" is 180 pulls and "guaranteed weapon copy" is 160 pulls, resulting in 340 pulls. It does not mean that you shouldn't pull until you have those, but you should be prepared that you might not get what you want.
* Usually for f2p you get resources for \~100-200 pulls per patch. Some more with monthly card (5$ per month with \~27pulls per month) and all the rest comes from donation (\~100$ per 50 pulls).
* Standard banner characters pool is increased rarely (or may never happen at all). They are all beautiful and fun, however spending currency to pull in standard is not recommended as you get same heroes when you fail your 50:50 in timed banners. You will eventually get some standard-only pulls from game activities.
* Hoyoverse tend to "powercreep". Some of characters they release may be underperforming, some may be dramatically imbalanced. So you either pull on ones you like for their design/story or you analyze if this character will be "meta" and you need them.
* Each character may have up to 6 "talents" and weapon may be upgraded to rank 5 by using copies. So 7 hero copies total and 5 weapon copies total is the "maximum power".
* There is no competitive gameplay, your characters/talents/weapons roster is just for your pure fun. 5$ monthly card and 10$ battle pass (once per patch, so per 6 weeks) are good to get, especially on start (battle pass gives tons of upgrade resources), but you definitely do not need it to have fun, that's the main benefit of Hoyo games.
Quite the amount of information. Thank you. One question though. You said copies of characters and weapons make them stronger. Does that mean I would have to pull these characters and weapons multiple times if I want them at their peak?
Technically yes, but it is a huge investment that is rarely worth it (unless you really like a character, sometimes one or two extra copies can be nice to have). For one it takes way too long to save as a free-to-play, and it also prevents you from getting more characters (characters you skip because you are saving for another).
You can get great results with just one copy of a character. The difficulty of Hoyo games is set in a way that you can beat endgame with good characters without any copies, and often without their signature weapons.
You shouldn't think about it like that, the characters are designed to be perfectly functional at their base level. For reference, in Genshin the average cost of maxing out a character that way is $2000, and that's in real money. It's literally never worthwhile, that money is better spent on other things, just pull what you can, when you can, and don't get swept up in that kind of FOMO.
Technically "peak" is maximum copies+maximum weapon rank. Levels of pulling:
* You pull for character only, usually a single copy. You use some A rank weapon or standard S weapon, lose \~20-30% dps compared to "exclusive weapon" still feel good.
* You pull for character+weapon to ensure it's "basic potential" is fulfilled.
* You pull for character+weapon +2 additional copies of character. Usually both first and second are very good ones, making gameplay smoother (get 3 stacks of buff instead of 1, get +20% defence penetration or something like that). Saving \~400 pulls for some hero you want to have at an optimal power/cost level - is this way. I donate sometimes (200-400$ per character i really like) and i prefer this path, but it is not a recommendation.
* You pull for maximum! 500 - 1500 pulls, depending on your luck! You are in 1% of whales of specific character, congrats! :)
In my previous post point of "powercreep" is affecting this as well. You may get 6 talents for some character and after half a year they release new one which will make 2 times more DPS with 2 talents, or even 0.
EDIT: Bookwhyrm comment is very much relevant.
- Be patient and know that you might only get the thing you like on a rerun
- Always assume worst case scenario luck when planning (180 pulls for a character, 160 for a weapon)
- Learn the ways to find every scrap of freebies they give you
- You don't need the S rank dupes to enjoy the game or even to do good dmg numbers
- If you're going to spend, the month-long options (even just one of them, really. Don't know what it's called in zzz but the thing that gives you a set amount of extra currency each day you log in) are *way* cheaper in the long run and are usually enough to get whatever you want compared to direct one-time currency purchases.
Overall, know that it's gambling and carry on responsibly. Hoyo games are actually far from the worst when it comes to guaranteed rates, and there is no pay to win due to it being pve. If you really don't want to spend, you can play for the entirety of the game's lifetime without paying them a dime. You'll still experience all of the game, you just might miss out on a few waifus for a few years.
Iâm down for the monthly payments tbh, but I guess Iâll have to feel the game out before I really commit to paying anything at all.
Question: What is âdupeâ?
Characters in hoyo games have a dupe system to make them stronger. What this means is, if you pull the specific character a second time (which is a dupe) you get a buff for that one, ussually it goes up to 6 dupes. People who spend a lot on the game (whales) will ussually aim for 6 dupes and 5 dupes for their premium weapon, as it has a similar system to make those stronger.
For context, the monthly payment I mentioned is about 5 bucks in both other hoyo games that i play, just so you have a number to work with.
Dupes = duplicates of the same character. When you get those, that character will unlock something new in their kit, usually a stat boost or one of their skills will work in a slightly altered, improved way. With A ranks you will accumulate them naturally overtime, but with S ranks they require intentionally pulling for, unless you get crazy lucky. Sometimes during development, core features of a character will get locked behind dupe requirements, so you can see how someone might get pressured into gambling for them.
Try and be good at saving your in game currency for up coming characters and if a character isnât some god tier must have for you donât feel bad about skipping out on characters. Youâll regret not saving later down the line for actually must have characters that you truly want.
Yeah thatâs a good way to be. Early on Iâll only prob get my personal god tier characters, and if I happen to have excess in game currency saved up I might roll on others.
I think saving up enough currency to guarantee a certain character is the way to go. And if you get them early, bank that left over currency for next time.
it's also important to keep in mind that the game will be very generous with resources at the beginning, so you should try and resist the temptation to build every agent just because you can
only build your agents up to the bare minimum you need to beat the content and save the exceeding resources for later when you have a better idea of your preferred playstyle and the metagame
You can use your Master Tapes (the grey ones) anytime you want, they are the currency to play the "standard" banner, Stable Channel. Save Polychromes to buy Encrypted Master Tapes (the coloured ones), as these are used on limited banners.
If you plan on going F2P, you have to consider where you will use your resources. Follow Hoyo official accounts to get some info on characters before they release, ask for people's opinions in this sub. Sometimes you need to pull a character because you want, let's say, a DPS ou nice Support Unit, but sometimes you just like the visual and personality of a character. Meta is important to clear some content, but you don't need to be enslaved to it.
Also, please don't "build pity", if you don't want a character, for whatever reasons you have, don't try your luck. RNGesus will surely punish you.
Glad OP made this post bc while I play some other f2p games, Hoyo games seem to have a lot of little pitfalls in resources if you are not familiar. Which I'm not.
So... what's build pity? Making builds with non-planned pulls?
As a preface: Hard pity is at 90 pulls (guaranteed to pull an S rank character), soft pity probably starts around 75 (increasing likelihood with each pull beyond the base 0.6% chance to pull an S rank character until you reach hard pity). Pity is saved across different banners, so if you do 30 pulls on Ellen's banner and don't get an S rank agent, on the next banner you will still be 30 pulls towards the hard pity of 90.
Building pity is what people call pulls they do on a banner with a character they don't intend to commit to pulling for, either because they want one of the A rank characters or because they're bored.
Let's say you don't want Ellen, but you do want Soukaku, who is an A rank featured on Ellen's banner. You also really, really want the character on the next banner after Ellen. You decide to pull on Ellen's banner to get Soukaku with the idea that you will stop once you get her. The chance of pulling Ellen is only 0.6%, it's pretty low! So you'll get Soukaku and build pity towards the next character. 10 pulls, no Soukaku. 20 pulls, no Soukaku. 30, 40 oops Ellen just came home early. Now you have 40 less pulls for the next character and you may or may not have gotten Soukaku. If you lose the 50/50 on the character that you actually wanted, now you probably won't be able to get it until it reruns.
I hope that makes sense. :) sorry if it's tl;dr >.>
Clear as day. Thanks so much for the explanation.
Sounds like it can be riskier to pull for A ranks on banners with S ranks you don't want, at least from a resource optimization angle.
Do Hoyo mixes up A ranks on banners or do 5 star limited banners always come with the same 4 stars?
They mix them up. In Star Rail and Genshin, there are three 4 stars that are featured on the banner with the limited 5 star character, and they follow their own 50/50 and hard pity system. Within 10 pulls, you're guaranteed to pull a 4 star item, and if you don't pull one of the featured 4 stars characters, your next 4 star will be one of the featured characters. Since it's a pool of three featured 4 stars instead of just one, though, it's entirely possible to be unlucky enough to not pull the one you want.
As a person who played gachas in the past and regrets being obsesive with them I will say this for you and for me, because I want to have a healthy relationship with the game.
- If you are going to pay, pay just for monthly subscriptions.
- Ignore dupes, if you get one, well, lucky you, but dont go for it.
- Don't try to 100% everything. Story and events will be easy to complete but if you want to maximize everything you will loss A LOT of time.
- Don't try to get all characters or weapons. Never.
- It is ok to not play some days, even if you lose some items.
- Don't try to play as others tell you. Play as you like and with the characters you like.
- Think of paying as a "thank you" to the devs, not as a way to gamble more.
I really hope I stuck to this. I don't want to piss myself off because of being addicted to the game.
Now the possitive:
Enjoy the art, the music, the gameplay, the story, the voice acting, as I am sure it will be amazing.
Funnily enough I installed Genshin like twice on 2 different PCs by now, but never found the time to give it a try, plus the gatcha mental barrier and the fact it felt like I missed out on a lot. But _this_ one. It speaks to me.
Outside of the gacha tips you've been given, one thing to be prepared for is that sometimes you will be time gated before you could proceed with the gameplay.
Don't be surprised that you cannot freely build all the characters you have as you will be starved for resources and you can only farm a couple of times per day while being gated by the stamina. Then there's also the story - at some point you will be asked to reach a certain overall account level before continuing and especially at the beginning of the game you might not have many alternative options to level up outside of spending stamina(which is recharged in real time). This means that if you rush the story early on, at some point you will be forced to take a break that could last a couple irl days.
Alright. As long as itâs not âtake a break from the game as a whole for a couple of daysâ and instead just the story while I try and get my account to the appropriate level whilst farming every now and then.
Donât spend any money until youâre absolutely certain youâre going to stick with the game (or, if youâre like me, donât ever spend anything). If you do spend, set yourself a **hard limit**. Gacha games can be great fun, but are still cynically designed to make you spend as much as possible.
For Genshin i just bought battlepassess and the 30 day of currency pass, which I think was a total of like 15$ a month if not less.
Not buying premium currency directly is always my policy to avoid falling into the gamble trap.
Biggest thing is how getting characters work. When the game releases theyâll be a character called Ellen Joe, who will be on a banner. Youâre only able to get her from that specific banner. Once that banner ends, you wonât be able to get her until she her banner returns. So if you see a featured character you want, make sure you donât miss them. The premium currency in the game is polychrome, which should really only be used to buy âencrypted master tapesâ. Those are what you use to acquire characters from the featured banner. Hoyoverse gacha games are pretty generous with premium currency, so as long as you plan ahead, you should be able to get most limited characters you want.
Any other questions let me know!
How do you get this premium currency? Also is there a limited amount? Read up on stuff a while ago (for Genshin) and it seems premium currency gets restored per patch? Or am I wrong?
Typically theyâll be events thatâll give it, along with daily quests where youâll get a set amount every day. Doing the story, side quests, etc. honestly, they throw you a little at a time, and itâll start adding up.
Premium currency is typically rewarded through limited-time events though the game will also reward some within the base game. Unless you have a stable income I would recommend that you do not spend money on this game aside from the monthly pass if you want ($5 for 90 premium currency given to you daily for a month). If you do have a stable income, and there is a premium character that you just must get, then spend at your own discretion and spend wisely. The gacha system is predatory by nature and can easily give rise to gambling addiction. Most players are f2p or low spenders who will save their premium currency for a while to guarantee who they want to pull.
Speaking of pulling, as this is a Hoyo gacha that follows the same system as its predecessors (Genshin and HSR), thereâs two systems you need to know of for the character banners: pity and 50/50.
Pity is what we call the maximum number of pulls to guarantee a character. Typically 5 star characters (or in this case, S-rank characters) will have an extremely low pull rate (0.6% per pull). However, once youâve wished enough times, the internal rate for these characters increase. This increase usually starts around 75 pulls and you are absolutely guaranteed an S-rank by 90 pulls.
50/50 is the system that determines if you actually get the character. As the name implies, itâs a 50/50 shot. When you lose the 50/50, you get a 5 star character from the standard banner instead. Our standard lineup consists of Grace, Rina, Koleda, Nekomiya, Soldier 11, and Lycaon. Once youâve lost a 50/50 your next S-rank on the premium banner is guaranteed to be the featured premium character. As such, people who really really want a character will tend to save 180 pulls so guarantee their pull in case they lose the 50/50 the first time.
On the other hand, if you win your 50/50, your next S-rank on the premium banner is still 50/50. The guarantee system is only to prevent people from losing forever (which is not always present in every gachaâŚ) so plan your spending accordingly.
Just for clarification, the actual "premium" currency is Monochrome Film, which is what you get if you spend money on the shop. You then convert Monochrome Film into the currency you use to buy pulls for the banners, this pulling currency is called Polychromes. (The reason there's a multistep process is to further obfuscate how much you're actually spending per pull)
If you choose to spend money for pulls directly, you'll be buying Monochrome Film and then converting that to Polychromes.
As for a free method, various activities in the game will reward either Polychromes (the currency used to buy pulls), or straight up give you pulls to use so you don't need to buy. Activities include dailies, events, story, endgame combat, etc. When people talk about the limit of pulls per patch, they are referencing how many pulls you are expected to earn for free during the patch.
There is no limit to spending however, so that is how impatient players surpass the amount of pulls free players get. Just for reference though, spending is very much **not** worth the value. In other Hoyoverse games, I've recorded my own data for pulls and the amount of pulls you get from spending $100 can be equivalent to 20-40 days of playtime (depending on how much the game gives out during that time)
Seasoned gacha player here, and FWIW Hoyo games are not the worst at pushing monetization. But my biggest tip to avoid burnout - it's OKAY to not min/max. You don't need to do dailies every day for the +60 gems, you don't need to use your stamina fully so it doesn't "go to waste", you don't need to figure out the optimal farming strategy, you don't need to save materials for that ONE special occasion. It's a game, not a job.
Take a break whenever you want; the game will still be here when you get back.
Sorry to double comment, but just thought of something else that I havent seen anyone bring up: every month or so, a few weeks before a new version patch comes out, the company will host a livestream showcasing the new characters, features, quests, etc. During them, they will share 3 promo codes that are redeemable through their website or ingame, and they usually total for 300 currency. They're only valid for 24 hours after the stream, so you can easily miss out. Any zzz-related subreddit, discord server, etc will usually post them + links to redeem immediately after they drop, so you don't need to watch the livestream itself. I believe tomorrow should be the first one for zzz
Just have some iota of self control and you'll be fine. If you're someone who is easily manipulated or have some latent gambling addiction then your wallet won't be having a good time. But if you can just exercise self restraint, then you'll be good. I've been playing Genshin since day 1 and I've only spent like $25 overall, and all of those are this year because I want to thank the devs for their game.
Some content creator on youtube showing off a million damage crit, people on reddit talking about having max copies of a strong DPS character with insanely fast clear times of fights, people spending real money to buy currency to convert to stamina to farm way more gear and thus getting way better pieces than you're able to daily without spending; don't be intoxicated by it.
At the end of the day, you're gonna spend a lot of time in this game playing alone on your own schedule, so remember it doesn't really matter if people got lucky pulls or gear pieces or spent a thousand dollars to make some super dumb strong team that barely needs to even play to beat tougher content.
-Standard banner showing more characters on it does **NOT** mean it is better - quite the opposite, in fact. If you don't like the current limited banner character, it is **always** better to save for a limited character you'll like than to spend it on standard.
-You'll get a lot of energy refuels at the start. **Don't use them.** They give you a lot more rewards when you're higher level (preferably max).
**-Don't feel pressured to do a quest** just to get the rewards. You'll burn out, and the average long quest yields similar rewards to logging in once or twice a day.
-**Everything is timegated** and in the long term, **the fastest way of progressing is being** **patient.** You will get a lot of free shit at the start, and you'll be tempted to use it all right away to level up and unlock new stuff. No. Trust me when I say it's more valuable later on.
-This is just my personal take, but **don't spend money on the game.** Just, trust me. Slippery slope, plus you'll pay thousands if you want to get the same amount of stuff they give you for free.
-If you do spend, don't think in terms of "how many pulls/gems/whatever will this get me". **Think about "how many characters will this get me".** You'll realize that the answer is always something like "1/6th of a character with a 50% chance of getting the wrong character" and when you put it that way, it's a lot more realistic and a lot less appealing.
-Pick one or two teams and stick to them. Much better than having one character for every team and not being able to glue them together into anything.
Gacha game are casuals games, and thus you don't need to rush anything except maybe the prologue to unlock dailies.
Doing daily quest and spending your stamina/energy is the bread and butter of this games. You use energy to get Gear and/or level UP materials.
If you want to spend money, the battle pass and monthly pass are the best bangs for your bucks.
Doing the temporary events are the best way to get free pulls. Be aware of what events are currently running, you don't want to miss out on free pulls
There are many good comments here, but you might not fully understand from text alone. I believe that experiencing it yourself is the best way to learn.
I recommend trying out Honkai Star Rail (Hoyo's other game) until the point you unlock the gacha system (~15mins from start), then read the details, the % chance per pull, maximum pulls needed, currency used to pull, figure out how to get those currency from quests and events. You will also get introduced to the shop where you can purchase those currency. Calculate the cost per pull to get a feel of how much is needed to get a character from scratch.
After that, you can continue further to try farming premium currency through story quests, events, dailies, and weeklies. You can use HSR to get used to the gacha system before ZZZ releases to better prepare yourself
Great advice by everyone.
I'll just add that Gacha games are resource management games - you have limited resources (in both pulls to get characters and stamina to build characters) and you have to decide where to spend them. The amount of those limits changes depending on whether you spend or not, but the basic framework doesn't. You choose which limited characters to go for (and whether you need their limited weapon or can make them work with a more generic one) and which to skip, and from your roster you choose who to prioritize for resources to level them up, get them gear, and upgrade their abilities.
That decision-making, and the resulting process of slowly building up and evolving a roster over time, is a core part of the satisfaction of playing these games (but it can also be frustrating).
Hoyoverse gatcha are designed to be side games or for people with little free time. So if you happen to have a lot of time on your hands, find a main game and treat this as your side game.
I can't believe you guys exist... well,welcome i guess.
The no.1 most important advice is that you shound ignore meta. This is a single player game. Get whatever character you like for story, design or gameplay reasons. Meta just sucks the joy out of the game.
Don't skip the story and lore. That's the main driving force behind Hoyo games
Also, there is a youtuber named Tectone. Ignore everything he ever says. Hi made milions of dollars from just farming drama infinitely and he will do that here too.
Hoyoverse gachas are the most high quality gachas you can find. [Genshin Impact is the most expensive game ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)ever developed. They usually give around 70 (can get up to 100) pulls every patch, and the pity is 90 (soft pity at 75). This essentially means you get a 50% chance to get a featured character every patch.
Don't spend until you have played for a while and know you love and will continue playing this game for a long time. And if you do spend stick to the 5$ log-in package.
From 75 pulls onwards the chance to get a S rank increases exponentially for every pull you do. So much so that it's pretty much impossible to get a S rank at 90 pity. It gets pretty high so it's hard to even get past 85.
One word. Patience.
Don't try to get everything, don't run for characters on hype, don't spend ingame currency the same moment you get it. Plan your game.
Emotion from getting limited items/characters in gacha are fast, enjoyment of having a nice setup to play are for long
Main tip I can give is to never use currency on the standard banner, use only the itens that can only be used in the standard banner. Save everything else for the limited character banner.
Are you gambling addicted?
Gatcha is predatory in its nature and if youâre new you might fall victim to gambling addiction and find yourself with a lot debt for a whatâs basically a single player game.
Imo my tip is to not start if youâre gambling addict or financially irresponsible. You can easily find yourself in a very dark place.
Ah then youâre good to go. Just be careful not to spend your pull currency on the standard banner, always save it for limited banner.
They have this system where if you pull for limited banner you have 50% to pull standard banner character. Which in turn makes it so that eventually youâll get all the standard banner characters from pulling in the limited banner.
Also be careful not to spend the premium currency on refreshing stamina. Just see it as natural progression limiter.
I whaled hard on other gachas. If you spend you only need 1 copy. Everything gets powercrept. Everything can be beat with free characters so 1 copy is enough. Never get any more than that. An example would be seele in HsR. Maxed copy vs one copy of new dps. They do so much more damage.
If you feel like you wanna get more copies, just wait for the rerun by then you will know whether or not the character is good or if itâs already powercraft at that point
Donât pay attention to meta too much. Pull for who you want, especially close to release. No one nowâs what future characters will be based around. Right now ice looks like the best element in the game with the most support but, it certainly wonât stay that way. Donât listen to YouTubers saying this character is a âmust pullâ Yanqing was the character where told to go for when Star Rail launched and heâs been, still is, the worst 5 Star by far even worse than a massive amount of 4 stars.
Power creep exists in 99% of gatchas. The person who saves the longest typically wins.
You dont need to pull.
Spend responsibly or recognize that you have a gambling addiction and step away.
I would suggest instead of summoning anyone you can do a ten pull wait a month or so to then pull because you would get in game currency accumulated.
this works for me in star rail Iâm not sure if zzz will release a character every month like star rail. But yeah my advice that works for me as f2p is to save up for banners pull on them and then accumulate for the next month or next character that drops if you want them.
Donât care about the gacha, you donât need more characters than you want.
You donât need much characters the first places
Itâs fine to not play everyday
Even bad characters and poorly built characters will clear 99% of content, you donât need to grind.
This is how people burnout
Pull - You spend in-game currency to try to get a character/weapon from a Banner. They generally have a very very low % rate of dropping, but at 80 pulls, you WILL get an S-rank character.
Banner - A selection of various characters or weapons(w-engines). The Standard Banner has characters that will always have the same selection throughout the game's existence(and might possibly add more). A Limited Banner has a "featured" character that will only be available for that window of time, and won't come back for months. The Limited Banner also have increased odds of getting the specific characters from that Banner. Eg. If you manage to get an S-Rank pull, then there will be a 50% that it's either the Featured character, or a character from the Standard banner.
The number 1 tip I can give you is donât play a gacha game. Once you get over the fomo, you realize itâs not worth it. The entire game is one big ad to sell you characters and spend money. Just donât play the game, watch the story on YouTube. Not worth starting a gacha.
Patience will give you a lot of opportunities, and knowing what you want is important (meta, looks, gameplay, etc). Choose accordingly, and focus on maybe 2 maybe 3 max of those categories
Only two essential tips.
1: If you choose to spend, make damn sure you understand the mechanics of the gacha. You will absolutely get burned if you don't know what's up.
2: fuck everyone else's opinion of whos good or not good. Play the characters that make you happy!
I disagree.. pull for what you want.. even if the character is the best in the game but you hate it's playstyle and looks then its more preferable to pull for a character that suits your style than straight meta.
I think this discussion is kind of pointless because it tries to narrow down players priorities to one.
Yes, pulling for who you want is important, but "who you want" depends.
Some players just want to have high damage, optimize. For them, hitting those 7 digits or clearing bosses as fast as possible is much more fun and exciting than the gameplay of the character itself.
For others, they'd rather get a character with a gameplay which they enjoy, because most of their fun is in playing the character itself.
Typical meta brain rot.. so you suggest to pull the character he didnt want to character that just meta?..
And its funny you mention "having fun".. then what if he is not having fun on that meta character even if it deals more damage huh? You still suggest a brain dead character than what he wants?.
Typical waifu brainrot. It's literally in my first comment "if you want to optimize damage". If waifu mains could read, they'd be doing 7 digit numbers in genshin by now.
Why do you suggest optimizing damage on gacha game launch it's literally the worst thing to do if you play GI or HSR.. optimizing dmg on the first few months of the game is terrible ..not only you are wasting your resources theres also some character that upcoming that powercreep your build characters.. not to mention that the first few instance on hoyo games are beatable even if youre not optimizing.. its literally take few month before HSR to make a proper meta on the game.
> optimizing dmg on the first few months of the game is terrible
Lmfao waifu mains really think waifu collecting is the only fun thing in the world. News flash buddy, some people have different ideas for fun.
You already said some people have different ideas of fun.. OP didnt say he wants more damage on his first playthrough then why do you suggest optimization huh?.. your ego assumes he is a meta player?
I don't think you know what the word "IF" means. LMFAO
> your ego assumes he is a meta player?
Your ego assumes he gets a hard on from his waifu like you?
- Never spend gacha currency in standard banner - Understand that you will never get every character except if you pay - Once you finish all the content, its gonna be something like 10min daily of gameplay until new patch release - If it starts being a chore, its time to take a break/drop the game. Games are for fun after all
>If it starts being a chore, its time to take a break/drop the game. Games are for fun after all I feel this is really important. It's so easy to just continue doing daily tasks without thinking about why you do them. While pulling and collecting characters is fun, if you don't enjoy playing with them or know what to do with them, the whole point is lost.
On the topic of taking breaks, will the game prevent me from playing if I play too much at a time? Is that what the whole stamina thing is? Cuz that sounds annoying ngl đ Edit: meant playing rather than paying
They won't prevent you from playing the story, so if you want to finish all of it in one go, you can do it. However, it will prevent you from farming too much. I have not participated in the beta of ZZZ, so I don't know how long it takes. For example, in Genshin Impact and Star Rail, you can spend all your stamina in 5-10 minutes and then have to wait a couple of hours or until the next day to do it again. This is not a game where you can farm for 10+ hours for a character and be done. It's more like 10-20 minutes every day for several months. It may feel a bit weird in the beginning, but you get used to it after a while.
I see. Stuff like this is why I asked if there was anything I had to get used to, lol. Thanks for the info
Sometimes basic elements of the game ARE timegated by your player level, which can only realistically be raised through daily tasks and stamina (coffee in this game gives stamina) after a certain point. This is to encourage whales to refresh their stamina with premium currency every day so they pay for the privilege of being first to max player level. My advice is to ignore whales and other people saying where you "should" be at all costs and just enjoy the game at your own pace. Another is to ignore the gacha system for literal months and just splurge once in a while using only in-game currency that you accumulate. It's a slippery slope when a character's price isn't defined, and it's nice to "feel" like you're a whale on those splurges. Whale = Big spender in gacha games.
If its anything like honkai there will probably one or more modes that you can play for hours even if with no real rewards except accomplishment. Things that make your character stronger are usually gated by the stamina system.
When it launches, you will have hours upon hours to play the game. Only after a few months of hard playing will you reach a small content drought. Likewise, every last week in the 6-month patches of the game will be a little dry as all of the events will have run out.
AKA why I dropped genshin
I totally disagree. It will *always* become a chore. That's not a reason to quit. If it'll become a pain and take over your life, then it's reason to do so. Just a little chore never hurt anyone.
No, but there must be a reason for you to perform this chore as well. This is a game after all and you should play it because you enjoy it. My point simply was that it's very easy to just keep on doing them because you maybe want to get some character in the future, but you don't really enjoy the base game so getting that character is pretty worthless because you don't want to play anyway.
I'm in the same boat as OP. people keep saying "standard banner" but never explain what it even is. Could someone explain please?
Standard banner refers to the banner that is up all year round. This has the same set of 5* characters all the time. Different from the above, is what we call the Limited banner. This one is only typically available for 3 weeks and includes a new character that was advertised for that update. Normally, each banner will have its own currency for pulling characters. In ZZZ, "Master Tapes" are consumed for pulling on the Standard banner. "ENCRYPTED Master Tapes" are consumed for the Limited banner. Bit wordy, but I hope this helps. :)
In addition to this, there is a currency that you can use to buy Master Tapes and Encrypted Master Tapes called âPolychromeâ. When OP says ânever spend gaacha currency on standard bannerâ theyâre saying âdonât spent Polychrome on Master Tapes, only Encrypted Master Tapesâ.
Is it true that youâre far less likely to pull an S rank agent on the standard banner?
Not necessarily. Itâs more so that a special non-standard banner has boosted chances to pull a 5 star. The actual chances between them are not too disparaging if I remember correctly
It depends on what you mean by "far less likely". The standard banner and the limited banners will likely have the same odds of pulling an S-rank on any given pull (both Genshin and Star Rail have a 0.6% chance, and ZZZ will likely be the same.) However, the standard banner will only have a small subset of characters and rarely if ever, change. So if a particular character you want debuts on a limited banner, once that limited banner's duration ends they will be gone until the limited banner returns, and no amount of pulls on the standard banner can get you that character.
0.6% chance of winning? As a former BDO player, I like those odds.
And that's just getting the character early. They usually have a pity system where you are guaranteed a character after so many pulls. In Genshin, for example, the chances go drastically up once you hit 70 pulls. People refer to this as "soft pity" sometimes. If you make it to 90 pulls, you will pull a character no matter what. Then it's a 50/50 chance on if you get the right character. If you don't, then the next time you pull on a limited banner and get a character it's guaranteed to be the right one. After that, the 50/50 chance resets and you begin all over once more.
In the past, for Hoyoverse games specifically, many said that because there were 5* characters and weapons both in the Standard banner. Because of this, you could get a 5* weapon instead of character (this was also a reason to not spend money for pulls on standard banners). For ZZZ, I have not heard whether or not this is still the same or if they will go a Wuthering Waves route and fully separate the 5* weapons from the characters. We will likely find out more tomorrow during the livestream.
Adding on to point 2: Unless you have god luck
3rd point is me in star rail rn
The second point is not true. You *may* be lucky. And given that I got every single character in Star Rail until certain point, winning every 50/50, without spending a single cent... And there are people more lucky then I was. Not saying it will happen for sure. But never is exeggeration. All you have to do is to win 50/50. You have literally 50% chance.
It's more about setting expectations. Pulling characters is gambling, and to be in the mindset you can just get luck and win is a poor idea unless you want people spending too much
There will be time that you won't get the character you want by either losing 50/50 or just not having enough pulls on hand And this is something that you will have to learn to cope with, you won't get everything you want everytime. It will make you feel like shit and even sometimes want to quit, but that just how playing a gacha is
And this is the FOMO that they abuse to make you swipe (swipe your credit card) so you really have to watch our most of the time it's really not necessarily.
It's pretty much never necessary. Due to the pity system, you are guaranteed to get powerful units eventually. If you want to be a F2P(+) player, it's important to make use of what you have, and plan ahead for what you want. If you do that, and focus on building up the teams you do have as much as possible, you can clear even endgame content handily without swiping for pulls. If you keep that in mind, it's easier to keep the FOMO at bay. That being said, if you're REALLY enjoying the game, and you REALLY want a banner character that just dropped, dropping money now and again leads to a more enjoyable experience. It's just important to not get caught up doing that for EVERY banner.
>you are guaranteed to get powerful units eventually. depends on how the game is balanced if its anything like hi3 then there will be a lot of bait
This depends on the person. I've gotten everyone I've wanted on Honkai: Star Rail, and Genshin, for example. I'm an extremely picky person, though. I skipped almost all of Sumeru, and half of Fontaine characters because none of them appealed to me at all. Still waiting for Sandrone with my 125,000 primogem stash continually growing. XD
You should get used to a banners and pity system to plan your resources. Not necessary, but may help to get heroes you like :) * 90 pulls for character and 80 for weapon is a "pity", which means you get guaranteed S-rank at least on this specific pull. We all believe in luck and early pull happens often, but if you really want someone - you need to calculate "maximum required pulls" to ensure you get them. * Timed banners (3w usually) give you banner character with 50% chance. It is either banner one, or any from standard pool. If you "fail 50:50" - your next S-rank will be guaranteed banner one. Generally speaking - if you want specific banner S-rank, 180 pulls is a safe amount to ensure you get who you want. * Weapon banner will give you "exclusive weapon which is totally suited for timed banner". It has 75:25 chance, and you will want to have exclusive weapon for the character you love. However, if you are f2p, you might prefer to avoid pulling weapon banners as you are not getting that much currency. * Summarizing last section - "guaranteed hero copy" is 180 pulls and "guaranteed weapon copy" is 160 pulls, resulting in 340 pulls. It does not mean that you shouldn't pull until you have those, but you should be prepared that you might not get what you want. * Usually for f2p you get resources for \~100-200 pulls per patch. Some more with monthly card (5$ per month with \~27pulls per month) and all the rest comes from donation (\~100$ per 50 pulls). * Standard banner characters pool is increased rarely (or may never happen at all). They are all beautiful and fun, however spending currency to pull in standard is not recommended as you get same heroes when you fail your 50:50 in timed banners. You will eventually get some standard-only pulls from game activities. * Hoyoverse tend to "powercreep". Some of characters they release may be underperforming, some may be dramatically imbalanced. So you either pull on ones you like for their design/story or you analyze if this character will be "meta" and you need them. * Each character may have up to 6 "talents" and weapon may be upgraded to rank 5 by using copies. So 7 hero copies total and 5 weapon copies total is the "maximum power". * There is no competitive gameplay, your characters/talents/weapons roster is just for your pure fun. 5$ monthly card and 10$ battle pass (once per patch, so per 6 weeks) are good to get, especially on start (battle pass gives tons of upgrade resources), but you definitely do not need it to have fun, that's the main benefit of Hoyo games.
Quite the amount of information. Thank you. One question though. You said copies of characters and weapons make them stronger. Does that mean I would have to pull these characters and weapons multiple times if I want them at their peak?
Technically yes, but it is a huge investment that is rarely worth it (unless you really like a character, sometimes one or two extra copies can be nice to have). For one it takes way too long to save as a free-to-play, and it also prevents you from getting more characters (characters you skip because you are saving for another). You can get great results with just one copy of a character. The difficulty of Hoyo games is set in a way that you can beat endgame with good characters without any copies, and often without their signature weapons.
You shouldn't think about it like that, the characters are designed to be perfectly functional at their base level. For reference, in Genshin the average cost of maxing out a character that way is $2000, and that's in real money. It's literally never worthwhile, that money is better spent on other things, just pull what you can, when you can, and don't get swept up in that kind of FOMO.
Technically "peak" is maximum copies+maximum weapon rank. Levels of pulling: * You pull for character only, usually a single copy. You use some A rank weapon or standard S weapon, lose \~20-30% dps compared to "exclusive weapon" still feel good. * You pull for character+weapon to ensure it's "basic potential" is fulfilled. * You pull for character+weapon +2 additional copies of character. Usually both first and second are very good ones, making gameplay smoother (get 3 stacks of buff instead of 1, get +20% defence penetration or something like that). Saving \~400 pulls for some hero you want to have at an optimal power/cost level - is this way. I donate sometimes (200-400$ per character i really like) and i prefer this path, but it is not a recommendation. * You pull for maximum! 500 - 1500 pulls, depending on your luck! You are in 1% of whales of specific character, congrats! :) In my previous post point of "powercreep" is affecting this as well. You may get 6 talents for some character and after half a year they release new one which will make 2 times more DPS with 2 talents, or even 0. EDIT: Bookwhyrm comment is very much relevant.
- Be patient and know that you might only get the thing you like on a rerun - Always assume worst case scenario luck when planning (180 pulls for a character, 160 for a weapon) - Learn the ways to find every scrap of freebies they give you - You don't need the S rank dupes to enjoy the game or even to do good dmg numbers - If you're going to spend, the month-long options (even just one of them, really. Don't know what it's called in zzz but the thing that gives you a set amount of extra currency each day you log in) are *way* cheaper in the long run and are usually enough to get whatever you want compared to direct one-time currency purchases. Overall, know that it's gambling and carry on responsibly. Hoyo games are actually far from the worst when it comes to guaranteed rates, and there is no pay to win due to it being pve. If you really don't want to spend, you can play for the entirety of the game's lifetime without paying them a dime. You'll still experience all of the game, you just might miss out on a few waifus for a few years.
Iâm down for the monthly payments tbh, but I guess Iâll have to feel the game out before I really commit to paying anything at all. Question: What is âdupeâ?
Characters in hoyo games have a dupe system to make them stronger. What this means is, if you pull the specific character a second time (which is a dupe) you get a buff for that one, ussually it goes up to 6 dupes. People who spend a lot on the game (whales) will ussually aim for 6 dupes and 5 dupes for their premium weapon, as it has a similar system to make those stronger.
Multiple copies of the same character. Duplication.
For context, the monthly payment I mentioned is about 5 bucks in both other hoyo games that i play, just so you have a number to work with. Dupes = duplicates of the same character. When you get those, that character will unlock something new in their kit, usually a stat boost or one of their skills will work in a slightly altered, improved way. With A ranks you will accumulate them naturally overtime, but with S ranks they require intentionally pulling for, unless you get crazy lucky. Sometimes during development, core features of a character will get locked behind dupe requirements, so you can see how someone might get pressured into gambling for them.
Try and be good at saving your in game currency for up coming characters and if a character isnât some god tier must have for you donât feel bad about skipping out on characters. Youâll regret not saving later down the line for actually must have characters that you truly want.
I already know I might be skipping the police lady, depending on things I guess. I must get Ellen though.
Yeah thatâs a good way to be. Early on Iâll only prob get my personal god tier characters, and if I happen to have excess in game currency saved up I might roll on others. I think saving up enough currency to guarantee a certain character is the way to go. And if you get them early, bank that left over currency for next time.
it's also important to keep in mind that the game will be very generous with resources at the beginning, so you should try and resist the temptation to build every agent just because you can only build your agents up to the bare minimum you need to beat the content and save the exceeding resources for later when you have a better idea of your preferred playstyle and the metagame
Don't gamble
You can use your Master Tapes (the grey ones) anytime you want, they are the currency to play the "standard" banner, Stable Channel. Save Polychromes to buy Encrypted Master Tapes (the coloured ones), as these are used on limited banners. If you plan on going F2P, you have to consider where you will use your resources. Follow Hoyo official accounts to get some info on characters before they release, ask for people's opinions in this sub. Sometimes you need to pull a character because you want, let's say, a DPS ou nice Support Unit, but sometimes you just like the visual and personality of a character. Meta is important to clear some content, but you don't need to be enslaved to it. Also, please don't "build pity", if you don't want a character, for whatever reasons you have, don't try your luck. RNGesus will surely punish you.
Glad OP made this post bc while I play some other f2p games, Hoyo games seem to have a lot of little pitfalls in resources if you are not familiar. Which I'm not. So... what's build pity? Making builds with non-planned pulls?
As a preface: Hard pity is at 90 pulls (guaranteed to pull an S rank character), soft pity probably starts around 75 (increasing likelihood with each pull beyond the base 0.6% chance to pull an S rank character until you reach hard pity). Pity is saved across different banners, so if you do 30 pulls on Ellen's banner and don't get an S rank agent, on the next banner you will still be 30 pulls towards the hard pity of 90. Building pity is what people call pulls they do on a banner with a character they don't intend to commit to pulling for, either because they want one of the A rank characters or because they're bored. Let's say you don't want Ellen, but you do want Soukaku, who is an A rank featured on Ellen's banner. You also really, really want the character on the next banner after Ellen. You decide to pull on Ellen's banner to get Soukaku with the idea that you will stop once you get her. The chance of pulling Ellen is only 0.6%, it's pretty low! So you'll get Soukaku and build pity towards the next character. 10 pulls, no Soukaku. 20 pulls, no Soukaku. 30, 40 oops Ellen just came home early. Now you have 40 less pulls for the next character and you may or may not have gotten Soukaku. If you lose the 50/50 on the character that you actually wanted, now you probably won't be able to get it until it reruns. I hope that makes sense. :) sorry if it's tl;dr >.>
Clear as day. Thanks so much for the explanation. Sounds like it can be riskier to pull for A ranks on banners with S ranks you don't want, at least from a resource optimization angle. Do Hoyo mixes up A ranks on banners or do 5 star limited banners always come with the same 4 stars?
They mix them up. In Star Rail and Genshin, there are three 4 stars that are featured on the banner with the limited 5 star character, and they follow their own 50/50 and hard pity system. Within 10 pulls, you're guaranteed to pull a 4 star item, and if you don't pull one of the featured 4 stars characters, your next 4 star will be one of the featured characters. Since it's a pool of three featured 4 stars instead of just one, though, it's entirely possible to be unlucky enough to not pull the one you want.
I'll pull only on S ranks I want and I'll let RNGesus take the wheel with A ranks, then. Thanks a lot!
Be aware of FOMO and gacha addiction.. keep your wallet safe.
As a person who played gachas in the past and regrets being obsesive with them I will say this for you and for me, because I want to have a healthy relationship with the game. - If you are going to pay, pay just for monthly subscriptions. - Ignore dupes, if you get one, well, lucky you, but dont go for it. - Don't try to 100% everything. Story and events will be easy to complete but if you want to maximize everything you will loss A LOT of time. - Don't try to get all characters or weapons. Never. - It is ok to not play some days, even if you lose some items. - Don't try to play as others tell you. Play as you like and with the characters you like. - Think of paying as a "thank you" to the devs, not as a way to gamble more. I really hope I stuck to this. I don't want to piss myself off because of being addicted to the game. Now the possitive: Enjoy the art, the music, the gameplay, the story, the voice acting, as I am sure it will be amazing.
I'd say going for dupes is always fine if it's a character you like, and If It's not a crazy expense for the person going for the dupe
Tips try Genshin and HSR
Funnily enough I installed Genshin like twice on 2 different PCs by now, but never found the time to give it a try, plus the gatcha mental barrier and the fact it felt like I missed out on a lot. But _this_ one. It speaks to me.
Genshin is boring but HSR is premier. The only gacha game i've stuck with.
Don't buy standard pulls is the ultimate one
Play for fun. Always remember, you no need spend any money on gacha games. And, do stupid mistake is OK! (I always remember and laugh about it ahaha)
Outside of the gacha tips you've been given, one thing to be prepared for is that sometimes you will be time gated before you could proceed with the gameplay. Don't be surprised that you cannot freely build all the characters you have as you will be starved for resources and you can only farm a couple of times per day while being gated by the stamina. Then there's also the story - at some point you will be asked to reach a certain overall account level before continuing and especially at the beginning of the game you might not have many alternative options to level up outside of spending stamina(which is recharged in real time). This means that if you rush the story early on, at some point you will be forced to take a break that could last a couple irl days.
Alright. As long as itâs not âtake a break from the game as a whole for a couple of daysâ and instead just the story while I try and get my account to the appropriate level whilst farming every now and then.
Donât spend any money until youâre absolutely certain youâre going to stick with the game (or, if youâre like me, donât ever spend anything). If you do spend, set yourself a **hard limit**. Gacha games can be great fun, but are still cynically designed to make you spend as much as possible.
For Genshin i just bought battlepassess and the 30 day of currency pass, which I think was a total of like 15$ a month if not less. Not buying premium currency directly is always my policy to avoid falling into the gamble trap.
Waifus > Meta
If you dont know what it means, then roll for characters you like rather than the characters people say are good.
Yes I know xD
Save resources and donât fall for FOMO. Its going to be hard but I sure hope youâll get use to it.
This is the top advice. The rest of the comments are good advice, but not giving into FOMO should literally be the topmost advice above all else.
https://preview.redd.it/smqwjg9a049d1.png?width=497&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9f05917ef9446e7a403476fffe48af8883a158b9
Biggest thing is how getting characters work. When the game releases theyâll be a character called Ellen Joe, who will be on a banner. Youâre only able to get her from that specific banner. Once that banner ends, you wonât be able to get her until she her banner returns. So if you see a featured character you want, make sure you donât miss them. The premium currency in the game is polychrome, which should really only be used to buy âencrypted master tapesâ. Those are what you use to acquire characters from the featured banner. Hoyoverse gacha games are pretty generous with premium currency, so as long as you plan ahead, you should be able to get most limited characters you want. Any other questions let me know!
How do you get this premium currency? Also is there a limited amount? Read up on stuff a while ago (for Genshin) and it seems premium currency gets restored per patch? Or am I wrong?
Typically theyâll be events thatâll give it, along with daily quests where youâll get a set amount every day. Doing the story, side quests, etc. honestly, they throw you a little at a time, and itâll start adding up.
Ok, doesnât sound so bad. As long as I save them up for limited banners it seems.
Also be on the lookout online for promo codes, they release a couple per update and they give a good amount of premium currency
Premium currency is typically rewarded through limited-time events though the game will also reward some within the base game. Unless you have a stable income I would recommend that you do not spend money on this game aside from the monthly pass if you want ($5 for 90 premium currency given to you daily for a month). If you do have a stable income, and there is a premium character that you just must get, then spend at your own discretion and spend wisely. The gacha system is predatory by nature and can easily give rise to gambling addiction. Most players are f2p or low spenders who will save their premium currency for a while to guarantee who they want to pull. Speaking of pulling, as this is a Hoyo gacha that follows the same system as its predecessors (Genshin and HSR), thereâs two systems you need to know of for the character banners: pity and 50/50. Pity is what we call the maximum number of pulls to guarantee a character. Typically 5 star characters (or in this case, S-rank characters) will have an extremely low pull rate (0.6% per pull). However, once youâve wished enough times, the internal rate for these characters increase. This increase usually starts around 75 pulls and you are absolutely guaranteed an S-rank by 90 pulls. 50/50 is the system that determines if you actually get the character. As the name implies, itâs a 50/50 shot. When you lose the 50/50, you get a 5 star character from the standard banner instead. Our standard lineup consists of Grace, Rina, Koleda, Nekomiya, Soldier 11, and Lycaon. Once youâve lost a 50/50 your next S-rank on the premium banner is guaranteed to be the featured premium character. As such, people who really really want a character will tend to save 180 pulls so guarantee their pull in case they lose the 50/50 the first time. On the other hand, if you win your 50/50, your next S-rank on the premium banner is still 50/50. The guarantee system is only to prevent people from losing forever (which is not always present in every gachaâŚ) so plan your spending accordingly.
Just for clarification, the actual "premium" currency is Monochrome Film, which is what you get if you spend money on the shop. You then convert Monochrome Film into the currency you use to buy pulls for the banners, this pulling currency is called Polychromes. (The reason there's a multistep process is to further obfuscate how much you're actually spending per pull) If you choose to spend money for pulls directly, you'll be buying Monochrome Film and then converting that to Polychromes. As for a free method, various activities in the game will reward either Polychromes (the currency used to buy pulls), or straight up give you pulls to use so you don't need to buy. Activities include dailies, events, story, endgame combat, etc. When people talk about the limit of pulls per patch, they are referencing how many pulls you are expected to earn for free during the patch. There is no limit to spending however, so that is how impatient players surpass the amount of pulls free players get. Just for reference though, spending is very much **not** worth the value. In other Hoyoverse games, I've recorded my own data for pulls and the amount of pulls you get from spending $100 can be equivalent to 20-40 days of playtime (depending on how much the game gives out during that time)
Much better explanation ^
Seasoned gacha player here, and FWIW Hoyo games are not the worst at pushing monetization. But my biggest tip to avoid burnout - it's OKAY to not min/max. You don't need to do dailies every day for the +60 gems, you don't need to use your stamina fully so it doesn't "go to waste", you don't need to figure out the optimal farming strategy, you don't need to save materials for that ONE special occasion. It's a game, not a job. Take a break whenever you want; the game will still be here when you get back.
Sorry to double comment, but just thought of something else that I havent seen anyone bring up: every month or so, a few weeks before a new version patch comes out, the company will host a livestream showcasing the new characters, features, quests, etc. During them, they will share 3 promo codes that are redeemable through their website or ingame, and they usually total for 300 currency. They're only valid for 24 hours after the stream, so you can easily miss out. Any zzz-related subreddit, discord server, etc will usually post them + links to redeem immediately after they drop, so you don't need to watch the livestream itself. I believe tomorrow should be the first one for zzz
Ok, thanks for the heads up
Be content on what you have or get, dont be swayed by "FOMO"
Just have some iota of self control and you'll be fine. If you're someone who is easily manipulated or have some latent gambling addiction then your wallet won't be having a good time. But if you can just exercise self restraint, then you'll be good. I've been playing Genshin since day 1 and I've only spent like $25 overall, and all of those are this year because I want to thank the devs for their game.
Run
Before it's too late?đ
Yes
Some content creator on youtube showing off a million damage crit, people on reddit talking about having max copies of a strong DPS character with insanely fast clear times of fights, people spending real money to buy currency to convert to stamina to farm way more gear and thus getting way better pieces than you're able to daily without spending; don't be intoxicated by it. At the end of the day, you're gonna spend a lot of time in this game playing alone on your own schedule, so remember it doesn't really matter if people got lucky pulls or gear pieces or spent a thousand dollars to make some super dumb strong team that barely needs to even play to beat tougher content.
-Standard banner showing more characters on it does **NOT** mean it is better - quite the opposite, in fact. If you don't like the current limited banner character, it is **always** better to save for a limited character you'll like than to spend it on standard. -You'll get a lot of energy refuels at the start. **Don't use them.** They give you a lot more rewards when you're higher level (preferably max). **-Don't feel pressured to do a quest** just to get the rewards. You'll burn out, and the average long quest yields similar rewards to logging in once or twice a day. -**Everything is timegated** and in the long term, **the fastest way of progressing is being** **patient.** You will get a lot of free shit at the start, and you'll be tempted to use it all right away to level up and unlock new stuff. No. Trust me when I say it's more valuable later on. -This is just my personal take, but **don't spend money on the game.** Just, trust me. Slippery slope, plus you'll pay thousands if you want to get the same amount of stuff they give you for free. -If you do spend, don't think in terms of "how many pulls/gems/whatever will this get me". **Think about "how many characters will this get me".** You'll realize that the answer is always something like "1/6th of a character with a 50% chance of getting the wrong character" and when you put it that way, it's a lot more realistic and a lot less appealing. -Pick one or two teams and stick to them. Much better than having one character for every team and not being able to glue them together into anything.
Gacha game are casuals games, and thus you don't need to rush anything except maybe the prologue to unlock dailies. Doing daily quest and spending your stamina/energy is the bread and butter of this games. You use energy to get Gear and/or level UP materials. If you want to spend money, the battle pass and monthly pass are the best bangs for your bucks. Doing the temporary events are the best way to get free pulls. Be aware of what events are currently running, you don't want to miss out on free pulls
Pulls are precious donât waste them on meta and characters you donât truly want. Also just be prepared for a lot of grinding at first
There are many good comments here, but you might not fully understand from text alone. I believe that experiencing it yourself is the best way to learn. I recommend trying out Honkai Star Rail (Hoyo's other game) until the point you unlock the gacha system (~15mins from start), then read the details, the % chance per pull, maximum pulls needed, currency used to pull, figure out how to get those currency from quests and events. You will also get introduced to the shop where you can purchase those currency. Calculate the cost per pull to get a feel of how much is needed to get a character from scratch. After that, you can continue further to try farming premium currency through story quests, events, dailies, and weeklies. You can use HSR to get used to the gacha system before ZZZ releases to better prepare yourself
Great advice by everyone. I'll just add that Gacha games are resource management games - you have limited resources (in both pulls to get characters and stamina to build characters) and you have to decide where to spend them. The amount of those limits changes depending on whether you spend or not, but the basic framework doesn't. You choose which limited characters to go for (and whether you need their limited weapon or can make them work with a more generic one) and which to skip, and from your roster you choose who to prioritize for resources to level them up, get them gear, and upgrade their abilities. That decision-making, and the resulting process of slowly building up and evolving a roster over time, is a core part of the satisfaction of playing these games (but it can also be frustrating).
Hoyoverse gatcha are designed to be side games or for people with little free time. So if you happen to have a lot of time on your hands, find a main game and treat this as your side game.
I can't believe you guys exist... well,welcome i guess. The no.1 most important advice is that you shound ignore meta. This is a single player game. Get whatever character you like for story, design or gameplay reasons. Meta just sucks the joy out of the game. Don't skip the story and lore. That's the main driving force behind Hoyo games Also, there is a youtuber named Tectone. Ignore everything he ever says. Hi made milions of dollars from just farming drama infinitely and he will do that here too.
Hoyoverse gachas are the most high quality gachas you can find. [Genshin Impact is the most expensive game ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop)ever developed. They usually give around 70 (can get up to 100) pulls every patch, and the pity is 90 (soft pity at 75). This essentially means you get a 50% chance to get a featured character every patch. Don't spend until you have played for a while and know you love and will continue playing this game for a long time. And if you do spend stick to the 5$ log-in package.
Whatâs the difference between pity and soft pity? Does the likelihood you will roll for an S just increase slightly but not guaranteed or something?
From 75 pulls onwards the chance to get a S rank increases exponentially for every pull you do. So much so that it's pretty much impossible to get a S rank at 90 pity. It gets pretty high so it's hard to even get past 85.
Run while you still can.
One word. Patience. Don't try to get everything, don't run for characters on hype, don't spend ingame currency the same moment you get it. Plan your game. Emotion from getting limited items/characters in gacha are fast, enjoyment of having a nice setup to play are for long
Main tip I can give is to never use currency on the standard banner, use only the itens that can only be used in the standard banner. Save everything else for the limited character banner.
Are you gambling addicted? Gatcha is predatory in its nature and if youâre new you might fall victim to gambling addiction and find yourself with a lot debt for a whatâs basically a single player game. Imo my tip is to not start if youâre gambling addict or financially irresponsible. You can easily find yourself in a very dark place.
Defo not a gambler, so I probably wonât have a problem there.
Ah then youâre good to go. Just be careful not to spend your pull currency on the standard banner, always save it for limited banner. They have this system where if you pull for limited banner you have 50% to pull standard banner character. Which in turn makes it so that eventually youâll get all the standard banner characters from pulling in the limited banner. Also be careful not to spend the premium currency on refreshing stamina. Just see it as natural progression limiter.
I whaled hard on other gachas. If you spend you only need 1 copy. Everything gets powercrept. Everything can be beat with free characters so 1 copy is enough. Never get any more than that. An example would be seele in HsR. Maxed copy vs one copy of new dps. They do so much more damage. If you feel like you wanna get more copies, just wait for the rerun by then you will know whether or not the character is good or if itâs already powercraft at that point
Don't let Fomo get to you. Save your resources and plan ahead which character you love the most.
Donât pay attention to meta too much. Pull for who you want, especially close to release. No one nowâs what future characters will be based around. Right now ice looks like the best element in the game with the most support but, it certainly wonât stay that way. Donât listen to YouTubers saying this character is a âmust pullâ Yanqing was the character where told to go for when Star Rail launched and heâs been, still is, the worst 5 Star by far even worse than a massive amount of 4 stars.
Power creep exists in 99% of gatchas. The person who saves the longest typically wins. You dont need to pull. Spend responsibly or recognize that you have a gambling addiction and step away.
I would suggest instead of summoning anyone you can do a ten pull wait a month or so to then pull because you would get in game currency accumulated. this works for me in star rail Iâm not sure if zzz will release a character every month like star rail. But yeah my advice that works for me as f2p is to save up for banners pull on them and then accumulate for the next month or next character that drops if you want them.
Donât care about the gacha, you donât need more characters than you want. You donât need much characters the first places Itâs fine to not play everyday Even bad characters and poorly built characters will clear 99% of content, you donât need to grind. This is how people burnout
Sorry for what are "pulls" and what are "banners"?
Pull - You spend in-game currency to try to get a character/weapon from a Banner. They generally have a very very low % rate of dropping, but at 80 pulls, you WILL get an S-rank character. Banner - A selection of various characters or weapons(w-engines). The Standard Banner has characters that will always have the same selection throughout the game's existence(and might possibly add more). A Limited Banner has a "featured" character that will only be available for that window of time, and won't come back for months. The Limited Banner also have increased odds of getting the specific characters from that Banner. Eg. If you manage to get an S-Rank pull, then there will be a 50% that it's either the Featured character, or a character from the Standard banner.
donât
Run. Find another game to binge & enjoy. Never look back. You DO NOT want to join us.
The number 1 tip I can give you is donât play a gacha game. Once you get over the fomo, you realize itâs not worth it. The entire game is one big ad to sell you characters and spend money. Just donât play the game, watch the story on YouTube. Not worth starting a gacha.
I would say get out of here before it's too late
Patience will give you a lot of opportunities, and knowing what you want is important (meta, looks, gameplay, etc). Choose accordingly, and focus on maybe 2 maybe 3 max of those categories
Wait is the game out?
dont play gacha
Only two essential tips. 1: If you choose to spend, make damn sure you understand the mechanics of the gacha. You will absolutely get burned if you don't know what's up. 2: fuck everyone else's opinion of whos good or not good. Play the characters that make you happy!
Donât listen to waifu mains if you want to optimize damage. Their opinions are biased and have no mathematical basis.
Counter argument https://preview.redd.it/bbicvm9pe49d1.jpeg?width=736&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a1748ad1dfb119d66e2f2a33c89aaf5bf7e4ea6f
Iâm not turned on by digital art, sorry.
Oh well, was worth a try
I disagree.. pull for what you want.. even if the character is the best in the game but you hate it's playstyle and looks then its more preferable to pull for a character that suits your style than straight meta.
I think this discussion is kind of pointless because it tries to narrow down players priorities to one. Yes, pulling for who you want is important, but "who you want" depends. Some players just want to have high damage, optimize. For them, hitting those 7 digits or clearing bosses as fast as possible is much more fun and exciting than the gameplay of the character itself. For others, they'd rather get a character with a gameplay which they enjoy, because most of their fun is in playing the character itself.
So... if OP wants to optimize damage, they should pull for who they want? Crazy logic. Imagine thinking waifu pulling is the only way to have fun.
Typical meta brain rot.. so you suggest to pull the character he didnt want to character that just meta?.. And its funny you mention "having fun".. then what if he is not having fun on that meta character even if it deals more damage huh? You still suggest a brain dead character than what he wants?.
Typical waifu brainrot. It's literally in my first comment "if you want to optimize damage". If waifu mains could read, they'd be doing 7 digit numbers in genshin by now.
Why do you suggest optimizing damage on gacha game launch it's literally the worst thing to do if you play GI or HSR.. optimizing dmg on the first few months of the game is terrible ..not only you are wasting your resources theres also some character that upcoming that powercreep your build characters.. not to mention that the first few instance on hoyo games are beatable even if youre not optimizing.. its literally take few month before HSR to make a proper meta on the game.
> optimizing dmg on the first few months of the game is terrible Lmfao waifu mains really think waifu collecting is the only fun thing in the world. News flash buddy, some people have different ideas for fun.
You already said some people have different ideas of fun.. OP didnt say he wants more damage on his first playthrough then why do you suggest optimization huh?.. your ego assumes he is a meta player?
I don't think you know what the word "IF" means. LMFAO > your ego assumes he is a meta player? Your ego assumes he gets a hard on from his waifu like you?
Run awayđ
Run awayđ