My Experience Rolling 40 Free to Play Accounts in Genshin Impact

 

Howdy friends, I've been playing a lot of Genshin lately as you might imagine; though not an ungodly amount or anything. Still had time to play 50 odd hours of CK2 and a full clear of Iorveth's side of the Witcher 2 while I was doing this. I've made close to 40 accounts but I'm not sure of the exact number, each run takes around 45 minutes to get to Adventure Rank 7 and then you get 40 free rolls; if I was on PC it would be like 37 minutes or so and then if you could skip the cutscenes that would be another 3-4 minutes; but I'm on PS4 so PS4 load times shall rear their ugly head. This is the run, my fastest time is about 1.5 minutes faster than this one:

Minor improvements: Fast Travel works inside of buildings, menuing is pretty responsive so you can skip some levelling animations, the optimal first fight is three headshots and then one wind blast which somehow magically hits the archer with a fire aoe, the optimal last fight (i.e. in Lisa's temple) is down attack, charged R2, super, switch to MC, whirlwind the hypotenuse and then it is possible to hit the first cycle of the moving platforms which saves ~10 seconds by itself; I've done it twice.

Here's what happened on the first two rolls of the 40th run:

So it's basically just a relatively fun speed run with a fair amount of AFK potential and also some reasonable skill tests plus enemy RNG. Genshin is very fun, seemingly no matter what you're doing; but it is much more fun on the way to rank 20 and also when you have specific characters that are immensely more interesting than others. Some of those characters are insanely overpowered, like 300% stronger than their contemporaries, and some of them are just mildly overpowered, but in general the powerful characters are also more interesting to play fundamentally.

On my first account ever I got Keqing, who is extremely fun and has the wonderful utility of being able to teleport; however I never got a second wind character which meant I was gimping myself on movement speed no matter what I happened to do in the game. This eventually got under my skin enough for me to start rolling new accounts, then it turned out the speedrun was fun and relaxing. Since I'm doing it on PS4 I have to get a new email address for every account (not as easy as it was 10+ years ago), the sites I'm using currently are protonmail and yandex, both of which let you make multiple accounts without using a phone in the process.

Twenty five runs later I got the $7000 man himself Diluc, I actually wanted Jean but Diluc is preposterous so this has become my main account effectively, but I'll still do dailies on all three accounts since dailies are extremely fast and generally pretty fun/easy ways to get experience. I bothered to get all the locuses on this account to go with the double wind for silly amounts of stamina and am presently just fighting world bosses on a daily cycle, eventually I'll do all the Liyue quests; Diluc/Fischl/Barbara/Xiangling (or Razor) seems like a solid party with sustain and comical amounts of damage;

Though the new party of Klee/2 Star Sucrose/Fischl/Whoever is a lot more active since I've got 6 R2's to cycle through; plus a billion unique animations for Klee. This is the next best roll I've had, haven't decided whether I'll bother playing it or not but it will eventually get 12 characters if I do:

I'd say on average about 30% of the accounts I made wound up with 9 characters, though typically they would have a Xiangling or Barbara so no later freebie for them. The Venti banner was much better for characters since it would always give you one for 10, but it didn't have Sucrose for the movement speed. Think I rolled that banner around 750 times, just one five star in Keqing on the very first roll; but since everyone else already has Venti if you ever play multiplayer he is sort of superfluous to have yourself (if you conveniently have Diluc).

Random notes: The Main Character's name is "G" except on the first account since that's the fastest thing you can input. I picked the male character once, it took a lot of concentrated willpower to do so but thankfully the rolls were garbage. Longest cutscene (not counting the full intro since it has an input) is Venti and Dvalin; second longest is the prelude to the railshooter; railshooter is very random so you could save around 5-10 seconds there just based on what Stormterror decides to do. Xiangling is by far the most common character aside from the guaranteed Noelle pull.

Nagorno-Karabakh and Theoretical GC Positions in the next ~50 years

 

Greetings friends, it's a long awaited strategic post. War started about three weeks ago between Armenia and Azerbaijan; casualty figures are hard to guess but probably around 20,000 so far between the powers and civilians. Turkey is nominally on Azerbaijan's side but can't just invade Western Armenia or the Russians will intervene immediately touching off a much larger conflict (Russians heavily favored). Reports on the war are infrequent at best since everyone's focused on electing one idiot over another colossal idiot (even in other countries). Thus r/combatfootage is your best bet for live information.

Important things to note: this is the first war with a traditional casus belli (previous territorial acquisition) between two technologically advanced nations in ~26 years (since the last war involving Armenia and Azerbaijan); it's not a civil war and both sides have a reasonable chance of victory barring intervention. A capable commander on either side could easily turn the tide but more likely its a drawn out fight in the contested territory and when one side starts to win the other will call in allies and then it will probably just be like the Syrian Civil War; which is STILL going on with its 500,000 casualties in the past 10 years. War is a thing of the past guys, we solved it. Let's all pat ourselves on the back. Turkey will get obliterated if they actually want to fight Russia, the US will not intervene beyond bombing indiscriminately; I don't think anyone's dumb enough to poke the bear in this case.

On the topic of commanders, the last Great Commander was the old chap Napoleon Bonaparte, my dearest friend. Naps died 199 years ago, just been a bunch of mediocrity since then with some brief flashes of brilliance (Jackson, Lee, Winfield Scott Hancock, Max Hoffmann, Rommel, Slim, Manstein, etc) but no long term consolidation of power or great world spanning campaigns to indicate ascension. With the present world state and highly probable massive wars on the horizon we have to consider what positions are ideal for producing another Napoleon or Alexander or Julius Caesar.

To start with the obvious both Armenia and Azerbaijan are eligible locations, right now most of the fighting is down to drones and artillery but a Tet Offensive style of attack would probably work swimmingly and a counter offensive a la the counterattacks after Kursk or the Hundred Days could demonstrate similar tactical acuity. Where else? China of course, but China is an enormous, comically heavy favorite in any war that doesn't involve crossing the Pacific; if you're an invincible juggernaut it is quite hard to be a GC; need to be in some sort of either even fight or straight underdog situation. China's targets? Taiwan of course, Japan in another 30 years or so; maybe some random places in Indochina. I sort of like the Philippines as a strategic base for further wars so that could make some sense as a target; if any one of these countries emerged victorious then it would probably be due to a Napoleon type.

Extensions of the Armenia/Azerbaijan war? We have Turkey (whose population now numbers 82 million, similar to pre WWII Germany manpower) most obviously, I think if Turkey just massed somewhere around 1.5 million men and sufficient drones/airpower they could take over the entire Middle East in about 6 months with a Six Day War strat, that's a hard as fuck plan to come up with so would be hard to doubt the commander who accomplished it. Russia is a favorite in future wars but not necessarily unassailable, despite their vastly superior head of state and while Putin is great for stabbing you in the back he's not necessarily going to be the best at shooting you in the face (or the side a la Frederick the Great's Oblique Order); and having such a powerful leader would likely reduce the local control of the general staff. Hard to fathom Russia producing a GC soon, but it could happen.

Russia's other targets? Ukraine of course, Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania less likely but not impossible, Ukraine seems like the ideal defensive GC position, underdog but not such an underdog that victory is impossible; relatively good relations with Western Europe. While stifled by Covid I don't think any nation wants to fight a huge war right now which gives incredible advantages to aggressors; isolationism in the US is probably guaranteed for 20+ years and no one seems to give two shits about the Uighur genocide so any tactic is on the table for offensive actors. I doubt Western Europe can stay completely out of any massive conflict entirely so the strategy is probably placate them for as long as possible and then prepare for a NAP breaking Operation Barbarossa style; which you'll recall was an astounding success for the first five months or so.

Not really sure what I can do personally, but I do have financial security so I can certainly be an interested observer for a decade or two. B. H. Liddell Hart perchance?

Witcher Books Discussion and Ciri Witcher 4 Game Musings

Hello Old Friends, today I'll be discussing the Witcher Books naturally. I should say I've only read 6 of them to this point but it was all the narrative ones and the Last Wish (The Lady of the Lake leads directly into the Witcher 3 proper). I bought the Last Wish and Blood of the Elves for my Dad about a year ago and finally decided to read those two myself on a camping trip an the magnificent Pictured Rocks. The Last Wish is fantastic and the rest of the books are above average fantasy or so, probably slightly worse than someone like Timothy Zahn and nowhere near Gordon R. Dickson's Way of the Pilgrim (it should be noted, Dear Reader, that Science Fiction and Fantasy are the same genre at this point in time, all using similar tropes). Here's a quick ranking of the 6 books I've read (chronology in parentheses), I can only assume the last two would be second and third best since the short story format works much better than an overarching constant cliffhanger style:

1. The Last Wish (First)

2. The Time of Contempt (Third)

3. Tower of Swallows (Fifth)

4. Baptism of Fire (Fourth)

5. Lady of the Lake (Last)

6. Blood of the Elves (Second)

Firstly Blood of the Elves is probably dreadful if you have no frame of reference, even having one it was still unbelievably dull except for the 30% of the book where things were actually happening; it is essentially just a giant fuck-off exposition dump. I was reading the books at this point looking for more elaborations on the world state and so forth and that's the entire book, but even having played the games it was still almost completely dry and uninteresting.

Time of Contempt is a massive improvement, having a fantastic banquet scene followed immediately by the biggest event in the narrative right up until Lady of the Lake; the whole sequence is great and at this point Ciri, the star of the narrative books, is pretty much a flawless, wonderful character. That starts to go awry a bit afterward but I'll elaborate more on that continuously; for now a discussion of Tower of Swallows.

Swallows introduces lots of new elements, aggressive usage of boring, tedious framing devices (the Lady of the Lake is nearly 20% such tripe), and extremely dark hyperviolent scenes; pretty much Cormac McCarthy levels of dark. Now that's not to say Andrzej Sapkowski is anywhere near as good a writer as Mr. Cormac; he is a fantasy writer after all (though whoever wrote Hearts of Stone is pretty close to McCarthyism) but that is the tone he's shooting for. At this point Ciri is part of a group of child/young adult bandits called the Rats; under their tutelage she's been raped by a Lesbian who she promptly falls in love with (more on sexual violence shortly) and also becomes a hardened killer; perhaps having killed somewhere around 15 people prior to the start of the fifth book. The Rats run into Leo Bonhart, a not-Witcher Witcher who is basically invincible a la Judge Holden or Anton Chigurh; his motivations are not entirely clear to start with but later he's revealed as a horrible sadist. Bonhart is the second best character from the books, behind the one-chapter Calanthe; neither is even close to Gaunter O'Dimm.

Bonhart kills all six of the Rats attacking him from all sides, Ciri shows up to watch her lesbian lover/rapist (for whom the rose on her crotch is tattoo'd) die, then he ties her to a post and decapitates them all in front of her. Great scene, I don't have much more to say about it, speaks for itself. Through the rest of the book he continues to torment her but does grant her the sword Zireael (Ciri's Elven Name Swallow) so she has a fighting chance, at one point she tries to kill herself and he says "You won't do it, witcher girl. In Kaer Morhen you were taught how to kill, so you kill like a machine. Instinctively. To kill yourself you need character, strength, determination and courage. And they couldn't teach you that." Great line, speaks for itself. I envision him sounding like Michael Wincott in 1993's Three Musketeers.

Bonhart is sort of Ciri's third parent (or fifth, even sixth if you want to be technical), bringing her back from a relatively evil path to a more Witchery neutral one; he drags her around like a circus act and eventually threatens her with posthumous rape; which she recoils from naturally. Unfortunately Ciri doesn't respond to even mildly offensive sexual encounters negatively; it's only absurdly evil ones (like, say Cannibalism, Science Experiment Cesarean Section, and Necrophilia) that draw her ire. 

One need only look at my youtube thumbnails: https://www.youtube.com/user/Fredchuckdave/videos?view=0&sort=p&flow=grid to realize I am not a prude as far as respecting certain parts of the female anatomy and also understanding the nature of sexual violence in the modern world and the perhaps irreparable damage done to the female psyche by thousands of years of such things, as farcical as notions of modern peace and prosperity are amongst robber barons the notion that women will simply cease to enjoy sexual violence almost as much if not more than men is preposterous. All of that said I don't think women are "supposed" to be that way and I don't think an extremely assertive woman who's killed 50 humans, many in cold blood would just willingly submit; no matter how pragmatic and intelligent she may be; to repeated sexual advances.

This discussion ties mostly into the last book, though I should note her first experience with Mistle is somewhat believable given her state at the time, the scene with Hotspurn less so, and the scenes with the Elven High King downright reprehensible (though oddly her scene with Eredin is perfectly fine, excellent even). Essentially she's stuck in the second Elf World and her only described way out by Avallac'h of Witcher 3 fame is to get pregnant and have a kid, conveniently time is warped so she could still make it back. After about two words of protest she's down for it and has sex with the Elf King three times, he eventually commits suicide due to his inability to inseminate her; what a tragedy (Eredin's involvement is ambiguous in the books, only intentional murder in the games).

If you've only played the games you may wonder why this isn't discussed at all, not even a little bit. That's because it's terrible on so many levels and utterly preposterous for a character that is effectively the ultimate badass and also a God of Space and Time. But because she's a woman she must willingly submit or something, Ciri is not Aloy levels of intelligent but she's smart enough to realize she can obliterate anyone whenever she feels like it aside from Bonhart, a male writer should theoretically understand the character he fucking invented and not subject her to such primitive chauvinism.

The other main element the narrative books bring is the gradual assembly of a Dirty Dozen type group for Geralt to hang out with, including Dandelion, Zoltan, and Regis from the games and Cahir (fantastic character), Milva, and Angouleme; they're all great and all reminiscent of any number of scenes from the games when those characters are around. The Dwarves in the books are interchangeably the same character just with 7 different names so I suppose it's simpler to just think of all of them as Zoltan, but Zoltan is also the brief participant in the Dirty Dozening.

Here we get to the more typically controversial part of the books, the latter half of Lady of the Lake; all the characters show up to save Ciri (who once again through asinine total submission is in peril) from the comically Arch Arch-Villain Vilgefortz and his henchman the fantastic Bonhart and the inept proponent of democracy Steffan Skellen (who gave Ciri her scar with a Shuriken or a Shuriken flail; doesn't really make any physical sense if you think about how he hits her with it and the shape of the scar). And then everyone died; the end. That's it.

I suppose it should go without saying that it is lazy writing to just kill off one major character and then kill off the next one two sentences later, the next a page after that, and so on and so forth; resolving all of your loose ends and confidently saying "I'm tired of writing these books assholes!" Kills the dramatic tension, generally an unsatisfying conclusion to a ~1200 page/3 book build-up. There's nothing wrong with characters dying, hell even all the characters dying (though the killer would have to be Eredin and the Wild Hunt for it to work); but the way its done sort of robs you of any sentimentality by the end; aside from the excellent scenes with Tywin Lannister, err; I meant Charles Dance, no wait Emhyr var Emreis. 

Yennefer, Ciri, and Geralt emerge from the ruins of the anti-climactic climax and as is discussed in the Witcher 2 Yen and Geralt are killed in a nonhuman pogrom/riot in Rivia (where I'm fairly certain it did not actually all begin despite what the book says). The pogrom is better than the castle sequence and maybe could've worked, but we're in this universe where Yen and Geralt survive and the games happened. The games are better than the books overall (Last Wish notwithstanding) so I feel Game Canon is superior to Book Canon, debatable though I suppose. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of early Polish readers since they are by and large the only people who read the books prior to the games existing, but I suspect most native English speakers probably feel about the same as me.

Geralt, Yennefer, and Dandelion are all brilliant characters, the Witcher's universe is fantastic and without the books the games would not exist; thus a top 5 game and a top 20 game all time would not exist and a top 2 character in Gaunter O'Dim would not either. So we are indebted to Mr. Sapkowski, no matter how unsatisfying the book conclusion is.

Extended Aside: The next Witcher game (which will sell 10 million copies and is therefore going to happen no matter what) is almost certainly Ciri as Witcher-girl (a frequent enough occurence in the books but only broached right at the end of Witcher 3; Bonhart's Cat medallion notwithstanding), with occasional guest appearances by all your favorite and not dead characters from the previous games. The best way to do this is make like 5-10 individual areas a la the Witcher 2; probably 2 of those being fanciful teleported worlds and the rest being in Temeria/Redania/Aedirn/Kaedwen/Nilfgaard (probably more Nilfgaard this time); somehow finding a way to justify bringing Cahir back to life would work quite well as a conclusive element. Game Ciri is fairly underdeveloped, similar to book Ciri except no catastrophic flaws to this point; but she will probably just wind up being an Androgynous Geralt and semi-indistinguishable from him in the long run.