Deus Esca Infodump

All I’m gonna do in this post is collect data related to new content that arrived with this update. A lot of this data is still being discovered, so expect the post to change in the coming days and possibly weeks.

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Phantom God of Creation

The raid functions much like the Yamato raid; you’ll need to carve your way through a large pile of regular enemies before you get to the big boss itself. You’ll also come up against two different forms of Deus Hunas along the way. I’m just gonna summarise what happens at each part of the raid; this isn’t a guide for the best tactics to defeat him quickly.

Deus Hunas

Beware of his lightning attack; it functions much like Falz Hunar’s ground slam in that it spawns multiple projectiles at once. If you’re in the center of them, unless you time a dodge or guard well you\ll be instantly incapacitated.

He doesn’t have a lot of HP so this part should be over quickly.

Esca Angel Squad and Vines

Not much to say about this section. Don’t run into the vines and kill anything that stands in your way.

Deus Anges

It’s Hunas again but with a hat and a new selection of attacks. Most of them aren’t terribly noteworthy though, so just hit him until a cutscene plays.

One attack to watch for is when he teleports into the center of the arena. The ground will start glowing; you’ll want to move to an area of the arena that isn’t glowing! These are typically at the edges closest or furthest away from him but the attack is also fairly easy to dodge with a step or mirage or any abusable i-frames.

Deus Esca: Part 1

Damage snake-heads until their heads are covered in bramble at which point they’re immune to damage. Once all heads are immune to damage, they’ll begin charging an orb. Attack the orbs to stun the heads. Once all heads are stunned, you can jump onto them and traverse them to attack Deus Esca’s core.

Unlike a certain anime, you can’t fall off this road and end up in hell but the boss will occasionally fail to create this road properly leaving you stuck on the main platform…

Beware, once Deus Esca recovers he’ll split the arena in two; if you’re near the attack use i-frames or you’ll take around 3000 damage.

If you see Deus Esca holding hiw weapon up like this don’t be where the idiot pictured is standing.

This attack splits the MPA up; each side will have to work on their own snake heads. Once they’re down you can attack the core again

Deus Esca: Part 2

In this phase Deus Esca will start to use more aggressive attacks on the arena itself. However his core is permanently exposed, so attack it whenever he’s between attacks.

Deus Esca: Part 3: The DPS Check

Deus Esca will blow up the moon, which is rather rude of him. This signals the final part of the raid which starts a 5-minute countdown. This is a DPS check; you\ll need to defeat Zephyros before this timer expires or else you’ll immediately fail!

Break the snake heads first to make him use attacks similar to the 2nd phase, then hit his core as hard as you can when you can to bring this god to its knees.

At some point you’ll deal enough damage to make the boss pass out on the arena. This is actually a secondary DPS race in that you’ll need to defeat the boss before it gets up again or else it’ll use a move that kills everyone in the MPA.

Rewards

Clearing the raid gives you shots at 14* weapons, a 13* Rappy and any Zeinesis item. For the most part though you’ll be getting Nox weapons and 10* trash.

The boss drops special exchange items named Qliphad Fuses. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’re back to the stone-age. The boss typically drops 1-3 of them so you’re looking at an average of 60 runs to be able to afford the 120 Fuse fee for Qliphad exchanges or to unlock a potential. 90 if you want a full set of Qliphad units. That’s pretty rough…

Deus Factor

The S-Atk factor finally arrives. It’s otherwise exactly the same as the other two factors.

It provides 20 S-atk, 10 R-atk, 10 T-atk, 20 HP and 1 PP.

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Weapons

The difference between Zeinesis and Qliphad weapons is entirely cosmetic. You will need 120 Qliphad Fuses and the corresponding Zeinesis weapon in order to obtain a Qliphad weapon. Like the Ray series update, the weapon retains its grind, element, potential level and affixes.

Unlike the Ray upgrade however, it seems the weapon will force you into the Qliphad potential when you upgrade.

Potentials:

The names here are not translations of the actual affix names, just placeholders.

• Affix Booster
  • Lv3 Boosts success rate of affixes by 10%
    • Only applies to this weapon, not if it’s an ingredient item.
• Party Booster
  • Boosts power by 12%
  • Heals 10% of each party member’s HP every 30s
    • The timer for the heal starts on area change.
  • Boosts party attack power by 2%
    • The attack boost is like a small, passive Shifta that applies as soon as you enter an area and re-applies every 30s.
    • The buff lasts for 30 seconds
    • Note that it’s like a Shifta buff, so its only raising your base attack by 2% not the amount of damage you do.
  • The heal ability will pulse for all party members, meaning if all 4 people have the potential you get a 10% heal 4 times.
  • The attack boost is fixed, however. It’s always 2% regardless of how many people in your party have it.
  • The attack buff persists even if you swap weapon.
• Qliphad potential
  • 14% Damage bonus and doubles the stats of your affixes.
  • This seems to include most kinds of affixes, including HP, PP and Resists. It’s not known if it affects things like Phrase.

The “Qliphad potential” potential requires 120 Qliphad fuses in order to unlock. I’m not sure which of the three this is at the moment.

Special Ability Factor

Zeinesis’ Special Ability Factor is “Sentence Triple”. It boosts all attack stats by 30, so it’s essentially equivalent to Modulator and can of course be stacked with it. It presumably cannot be stacked with other Sentence abilities.

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Units

Unlike weapons, there are in fact differences beyond the cosmetic. Qliphad units will require 60 Qliphad fuses each as well as the corresponding Zeinesis unit. For the other way round, you only need the corresponding Qliphad unit.

Stats

• Zeinesis:
  • 120HP, 4PP, 15Atk
  • Rear: 3% S-Res, 3% R-Res, 2% T-res
  • Arm: 2% S-Res, 3% R-Res, 3% T-res
  • Leg: 3% S-Res, 2% R-Res, 3% T-res
  • Each unit also offers 2% all element resist

• Qliphad:
  • ??HP, ??PP, 35Atk
  • Rear: 2% S-Res, 2% R-Res, 1% T-res
  • Arm: 1% S-Res, 2% R-Res, 2% T-res
  • Leg: 2% S-Res, 1% R-Res, 2% T-res

So it seems that Zeinesis units are more defense oriented where Qliphad offers more PP. The values for Qliphad likely aren’t going to be known for a few days as people collect enough Qliphad Fuses.

There does not appear to be a set bonus.

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14* Weapons

There’s very little information about them currently, as very few people have been lucky enough to obtain one then go on to share data about them. As such it may be some time before we know the full capabilities of these weapons. To put it into perspective, there’s still some confusion about the Escafalz Mother 14*s and she came out a few months ago..

Lavis Cannon

• Potential: 未知なる魔杖
  • Boosts the power of normal attacks. Fires a shock-wave on the third part of the combo.

Interestingly, this Wand comes with kinda low S-Atk. Kind of wierd when the potential seems focused on normal attacks and we know from the reveal that it’s innate ability is to speed up Step and Normal Attack speed. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how much it boosts normal attack damage by to judge this one properly, as well as how the shockwave functions (as in, does it function like Form Wand’s?)

Rykros Staff

• Potential: 闇の一瞥
  • During Alter Ego, your Pet’s Sympathy requests are automatically fulfilled.

A fairly handy innate ability, as you won’t need to interrupt your own attacks or lose PP to heal/buff your pet when it requests it. We also know from the trailer the staff will auto-cast Megid whenever you issue commands to your pet.

Kuvele Scarlet(?)

A double saber that turns DS whirlwinds into firey tornadoes.

• Potential:  緋炎の両刃
  • Increases the power of DS Kamaitachi. Increases power by ??%

DS Whirlwind is already how Double Sabers do a heck of a lot of damage (thanks to the DS Whirlwind Skill Ring) so the fact it boosts the power and duration of those is already enough to make this a potentially seriously powerful weapon. We’ll know for sure once the potential’s numbers have been worked out.

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Episode 4’s Astral Soul

As the subtitle suggests, Episode 4 has gained its own version of Astral Soul. What’s more is it could stack with Astral Soul making for some potentially obscene affix loadouts.

The affix is named “Ether Factor” and it boosts all stats by 30, HP by 10 and PP by 6.

You’ll need to do the following to obtain it:

1. Fuse Yamato Factor + Mother Factor + Deus Factor = Factor Catalyst 10%
2. Fuse To’ou Soul + Full Vegas Soul = Ether Soul 10%
3. Fuse Factor Catalyst * 4 + Ether Soul = Ether Factor 60%

So suddenly the likes of Yamato Factor become relevant again. Ether Soul shouldn’t be a problem as those souls are readily available; but supply of the factors will only occur when the relevant raid is up.

While you could combine it with Astral Soul it won’t be easy, however having both would give you 65 in all stats as well as 45 HP and 11 PP. That’s pretty nuts for just 2 affixes!

This would also make Astral Soul, Ether Factor, Returner V and Ability 3 the most solid all-round 4-slot affixes in the game. Getting it would be nearly impossible for most players, mind. For clarity, that would be:

• 110 all attack, defense and dexterity
• 75 HP
• 16 PP

Obscenely good for 4 slots but err… good luck!

I mean if we went completely nuts and shot for the stars you could go for Astral + Ether + Returner + Modulator + Doom Break + Ability  + MutaII. That would give:

• 170 all attack
• 110 all def and dex
• 90HP
• 18PP

The ultimate all-rounder unit. Or you could throw out the MutaII and put Stat V and Elegant Stat if you want to focus on one attack stat. This is so far into crazytown though I don’t want to contemplate it any..

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New Recycle Shop Addition : Class Cube Shop

This shop offers Grind Limit +1 items for specific weapon types. The exchange rate is one Weapon Specific Grind Limit +1 for 300 class cubes.

Pretty nasty… You get 5 class cubes every level up at 80, which is 9.8M exp per. So each of these items costs 60 level up bonuses at lv80, or around 588M Exp per item. I’m speechless.

PSO2 Station #7 Writeup

Not a lot to go over with this one, honestly. Much of it was just going over stuff we’d already seen from the last broadcast with some additional details along with the new roadmap. An oddly dull set of updates, in my opinion.  Episode 4 seems set to go out with a fizzle rather than a bang.

Oh one thing to make clear right at the start is there was no info at all about Episode 5 this time. I expect we’ll get something in the May broadcast.

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Trailers

With thanks to Goukezitsu for uploading these as usual.

Deus Esca, Wedding Lobby and more Design Contest winners and Phaleg fight.

Rainy Season 2017, Episode 4 oufits (Kohri and Enga)

PSO2es May Update. Usual guff, new weaponoids (more male ones at that!).

5 Year anniversary project. Cosmetics and Lobby Actions. An Offline event.

Towards the Fu- I mean Arks Battle Chronicle! Plus new Quna concert

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Deus Esca: Grasia

In early May, the Deus Esca raid will be getting a follow-up quest which you gain access to after clearing the raid; a rematch against a tougher version of the boss with 3 other players instead of 11. This requires lv80/80 however, so if you haven’t finished levelling up you might want to abuse the boost week while it’s up.

The 4-man version additionally has a quest fail condition; your party must not suffer more than 5 incapacitations total or the quest automatically fails. Sure hope you don’t get lumped with someone who keeps dying…

The trailer doesn’t really reveal any insights into the boss’s mechanics still. We see it doing a sweeping attack that deals in the region of 60K damage so I guess that’s the good old fashioned Raid-wipe attack. Presumably it also has the damage cap like the regular version of the boss, so SuGu won’t be able to cheese it as hard.

While I do hope it is trickier than the regular raid I kinda hope its not too much. This is content that occurs randomly after all, which in my opinion is an inappropriate place to make content that’s too difficult. What’s more is each character’s individual performance and build becomes much more important when there’s fewer characters in the quest, so any badly geared horror story is going to have much more impact than they would in a full raid… All the more motivation to start making friends!

Weapons and Units

The only thing of note here is confirmation that the difference between Zeinesis and Qliphad weapons is entirely cosmetic. They both have exactly the same stats and presumably will also have the same three potentials. You can even swap Qliphad back to Zeinesis if you prefer the look of it.

• Zeinesis to Qliphad requires a Zeinesis weapon and 120 Qliphad Fuses.
• Qliphad to Zeinesis requires a Qliphad weapon.

A kind of one-sided exchange considering the only real difference between the weapons is looks, but I guess they intended Qliphad to be kind of the prestige version of the weapon.

You apparently only get one fuse per clear, mind, which means 120 clears of the raid for one weapon. Kinda nasty, but you might get lucky and have a Qliphad drop from Deus Esca Grasia (Zephytos drops Zeinesis).

I actually didn’t cover the weapon potentials when they were announced, so here’s what we know about them from the Arks Live broadcast a while ago:

• Boost Affix transfer rate by 10%
• Recovers party member HP every 30 seconds and boosts party damage
• Doubles the numeric value of affixes (example: Power 3 becomes 60 S-Atk instead of 30)

So lacking some important details. The stat-boost potential might actually be interesting for some classes if it also boosts the affixes on your units (particularly for Katana Braver).

Units on the other hand do appear to have some differences. Qliphad seem to have slightly lower defense and offer no element resistences unlike Zeinesis. At this point we know absolutely nothing about what the units offer but just be aware it does seem like there may be a functional difference between the two. Unit upgrades require 60 Qliphad fuses per unit as well as a Zeinesis unit.

Deus Esca’s rematch is set to arrive in early May.

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Phaleg Side Story

They only really announced a couple of tidbits for this quest. Essentially, the only reward for the fight will be a title for the class you cleared the quest on. So really it’s just a bonus Super-Boss style encounter, which is to say it’s entirely optional. As such, they’re free to make the quest as difficult as they like and it certainly does seem like the quest will be extremely difficult if it lives up to the hype.

The quest disables the use of Scape Dolls and Half Dolls, but it also implements the healing reduction that was present in the Odin quest. This means that all sources of healing will be 20% as effective as normal (that is, a Trimate will only heal 20% of your HP and Monomate a mere 6%). You’ll also need to defeat her in 6 minutes or less.

Its kind of hard to gauge how much damage she does, as the test character is using Guard Stance to muddy the waters a bit but she seems plenty aggressive and possibly deals plenty of damage. This combined with the restrictions on healing does have the potential to make the encounter quite a tough one, though much like the Odin quest this does effectively mean class combos with access to Resta will have a pretty huge advantage. I also suspect Megiverse will be entirely useless.

The footage also reveals that Phaleg is weak to ice, which suggests to me that Ice Force combos are going to be the ones that will find this quest the easiest unless she has some modifier for Tech damage..

Phaleg will have the damage cap fix enabled, which means you will not be able to deal more than 999,999 damage to her per hit. This is an attempt to prevent SuGu from cheesing it, but it also affects BrGu and of course main-class Gunner variants as well as class combos that took advantage of Banish/Graptor. That said, 999,999 damage is still quite a lot and honestly if the likes of the Maron revolver still have trouble taking Phaleg down when they can on-demand deal nearly a million damage I dread to think the issues other class combos are going to have against her…

This fight also lacks an HP bar on the enemy, which for a challenging fight is annoying because you’ll have no idea how close you came each time you fail.

You can do battle with the ARKS favorite anime cliche in early May.

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Arks Battle Chronicle

For the 5th Anniversary event we’ll be getting a special quest paying tribute to all of the major content updates along the way.

As well as starring the regular encounters from free fields it’ll also be re-using story mode and emergency quest enemies, with Theodore, Aratron and Dark Vibrace being among the long list of enemies to battle your way through. It also has things like Apos Dorios, which I believe is the first time that boss has ever appeared outside of its raid quest.

There’s quite a lot of hefty looking encounters in this quest, to the point where I wonder if what we’re seeing is actually multiple different quests that are all part of the same event? One for each episode, perhaps?

There’s currently no actual date set on this, but I assume it’s arriving in early June.

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The Final Roadmap

…For Episode 4. There’s going to be another when Episode 5 hits.

So yeah, Episode 5 is going to hit in the Summer. Other than that, to quote Bumped:

Current Update

• 12 Person Raid Boss
• Added Emergency Quest Rematch
• Design Contest Scratch
• Episode 4 Side Story

5th Anniversary Event: Phantasy Star Festa 2017 Online

• 5th Anniversary Web Event [ARKS BATTLE CHRONICLE]
• New LIVE Event
• Boosted Raid Boss & Boosted Raid Boss Rematch
• Frame Arms and Frame Arms Girl Collaboration
• Famous Designer Collaboration Scratch
• Tokyo Field Real Store Collaboration Part 3

So yeah, a kind of bare-bones roadmap overall. The only noteworthy item there that isn’t already covered in this post is the possibility that the boosted raid boss is referring to Phantom Ship Yamato. While this could be the case, I’m kind of curious how the rematch quest would work for that, given it’s a 4-man quest and I imagine the missile section would be quite tricky with 4 people…

That said, data-mining supports the hypothesis that it’s a boosted Yamato, as “PhantomShipEx” does exist in the game’s data. “Ex” is a term reserved for boosted versions of raid-bosses in the past.

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Thoughts

Seems like a regular set of content updates as far as I’m concerned. New seasonal quest, new event quest, some story stuff and a new raid. That’s not too bad for 2 months all in all, and yet somehow it feels… lacking.

Is any of it interesting? I can’t say I’m jumping for joy at it all, except for the Arks Battle Chronicle cause that looks fun. I think my lack of excitement is just I don’t care a lot about the Raid in terms of the story. Ardem just was not that interesting an enemy; in fact everything past Escafalz Mother feels tacked on to me. The rewards for the raid are also not terribly interesting on the face of it, but that may change as more details are revealed. As for the fight itself, who knows the fight might be fun and it might still drop a decent amount of cubes or something worthwhile.

It could well be that the game is just starting to feel its age. Maybe it’s getting stale or the developers are getting sick of working on it and we the audience are unknowingly sensitive to this.

Or it could be that I and others got themselves hyped up for Episode 5 and felt a bit let down when nothing was said! In fairness, it makes more sense to wait until the actual fifth anniversary before they say something (indeed, I speculated as such some time ago).

It could also just be that the upcoming stuff just feels too by the numbers. We expect a seasonal quest, we expect a raid boss every few months and an event here and there. That they’re delivering on it is absolutely fine (indeed, preferable) but it’s hard to be excited when there are no surprises. I don’t know, I’m theorycrafting here and probably overthinking it.

Hi, Mom!

With the latest update we got to face off against Episode 4’s second raidboss; the malevolent shell of Escafalz Mother. I hope you’re somewhat used to the Rideroid by now!

I did want this post out sooner but new information kept kinda trickling in, making me re-write good portions of it. It’s possible some of the information in this will turn out to be wrong later on anyway..

The Fight

Chase

You’ll chase Mother around the moon base on your Rideroid. The base is more like a racetrack, which you can end up doing multiple laps of before it times out. Each lap the course gains additional obstacles, making keeping up with Mother increasingly difficult.

As well as avoiding obstacles, Mother herself will be throwing a large array of attacks at you all of which do considerable amounts of damage. There’s not much you’re going to be able to shrug off, as the healing circles restore very little of your health.

You’ll need to keep up with her, as if you get too far away you’ll take constant damage and be killed.

Get close and break her balls! You can also barrel-roll into her wall attack to deflect them into her. Doing so seems to slow her down.

In order to defeat Mother, you’ll need to break her four cores which stuns her. In that time, you’ll need to do as much damage to her as you can! Repeat this a few times (she’s typically down on her third break) and she should be defeated with relative ease. They give you a huge window of time to do this, so after people get used to the Rideroid part you should see very few failures. If you do fail, you’ll get a B rank which has a huge impact on the amount of drops you’ll get. At that point, you may want to consider abandoning unless you’re not sure you’ll get an additional run. It’ll still count just the same for collection file progress even if you do get a B-rank.

You have a few abilities at your disposal:

Autoshoot

Autoshoot will automatically fire at Mother as long as your crosshairs are over an attackable point.

Missiles

Fires a bunch of homing missiles that do decent damage. Again, you need to have your crosshairs over an attackable target for this to work. Take the environment into account, too, because the missiles can crash into them wasting your attack.

Do a Barrel Roll

You’ll spin on the spot, dealing damage within melee range. This is by far your most damaging attack and you should be mercilessly spamming it when the opportunity presents itself. This attack also serves other purposes, such as reflecting Mother’s spinning wall attacks back at her!

Overboost

Puts your Rideroid into overdrive, letting you catch up to Mother more quickly. It should be noted that most of the time you’re moving faster than Mother is but she can move in bursts or you spend too much time dodging and she gets away from you.

Dying

Well it’s sort of an ability! If you run out of HP you’ll be “dead” and have to wait 5 seconds to be respawned. You’ll be respawned right in front of Mother and are allowed up to 12 deaths before it negatively impacts your rank. As a result, if you fall behind far enough it might be better to die and respawn than attempt to catch up.

Phase 1

Phase one is relatively straightforward. She uses a bunch of well telegraphed attacks, based largely on which arms happen to be up. The main body is invulnerable while arms are alive, so the only thing you can do here is DPS those down. Once all arms are dead, Mother will be stunned for a while, exposing her core. Burn the core as hard as you can, as you only have a limited window.

She’ll repeat this cycle a few times, summoning more arms each time you down her. The more arms she had at the time, the longer she’ll be stunned for when you break them all. The number of times you’ll have to do this depends on your MPA’s DPS, as if your MPA fails to meet the DPS check while she’s stunned you’ll have to stun her an additional time meaning you’ll have to kill more arms. Their HP is not shared with Mother, so failing these checks will mean a significantly longer fight, overall.

Each arm has an attack or two borrowed from a Dark Falz. You can tell which arms are generating which attacks by looking at their crowns; Loser has wings, Double has a wall , Apprentice has sort of bug-eyes with mandibles and Elder has the head and fins from its Falz Arms. Due to the way they attack, generally Loser’s arm ends up being the last one to be taken down as it’s the most mobile. The most dangerous one is Double’s, which can put up a circular wall around the party and deal devastating damage to anyone who fails to escape. The rest deal very little damage and isn’t difficult to heal through.

Overall I like this phase but it overstays its welcome if your MPA’s DPS isn’t up to scratch. You can end up going through the cycle of breaking arms and assaulting Mother’s chest up to six times and personally by the fourth I’m bored of it. It feels repetitive, which is a shame because otherwise mechanically I quite like it.

There’s other minor annoyances in this part too, such as Mother’s hitbox taking priority if an arm wanders near her. If this happens, the Arm won’t take any damage! This is because the arms are not considered separate targets like Falz Arms are, which means you can only hit one at time even if they’re clumped together.

Phase 2

Mother plants herself in the arena and starts using a number of new attacks. She is incredibly aggressive in this state and can dish out surprisingly high amounts of damage out of the blue. Techers will want to try to keep pumping Resta out or putting down Megiverse fields just so your DPS can keep it up.

So much happens here that it’s kind of a cluster-fuck and as a result I can’t say I’m much of a fan of it. At least a lot is happening and she does have a wide variety of attacks it’s just the speed and number of them might be a little much for me. Mother herself also moves a lot, so if there are any mechanics attached to breaking parts I’m not going to find out any time soon as a sword Hunter! Otherwise the only thing I could really pick out so far is she summons bombs which I think you can break to neutralize.

That said, this phase is a welcome sight in certain groups after the first phase has long out-stayed its welcome.

Death Cubes

This is Mother’s raid-wipe move. She’ll use it at 50% and at around 25% HP. She creates a ring of cubes that slowly make their way to the center of the arena, while also gently pushing players out toward the edge of the ring. You’ll need to break as many cubes as you can before they reach the center of the arena, as the damage she deals after scales with the number of cubes left alive. I’m not sure what the lethal cutoff point is, but the attack pulses and hits around 4 times (possibly more at higher numbers of cubes left). With 4-5 cubes left, she was dealing 350 damage to me, for a total of 1400 damage which is only just under my maximum HP. So I’d say you wanna shoot for 1-5 cubes left, as any more and unless you have a tank or Deband Toughness up you’re going to lose people. The damage is Tech based, so the higher your T-def the less damage you’ll take from the attack.

You can’t guard the damage but you can dodge it if your timing with evasion skills is spot on.

Note that the cubes are not considered separate targets, so area-of-effect attacks will still only hit one cube.

Your typical MMO raidboss DPS check. I was never a fan of this kind of thing and it’s sad to see it come up more in PSO2. It’s not the most strict check, but again it’s the classic problem with raiding in a game like this; its intended for random groups to run it so you have little control over everyone’s builds and such. You don’t know if they’re going to be running ideal builds or having ideal weapons for dealing with the raid-wipe mechanic, which favors classes that can do sustained damage in an area without the worry of the push-back effect moving them out of effective range. Worse is when you have a bunch of people giving up before the DPS check begins; holding the Photon Blast button while those without end up doomed to the attack!

That said, the raid doesn’t end when everyone’s dead so there’s no punishment for being caught in the attack. So it’s not really a big deal.

Loot

Mother can drop the game’s very first 14*s but you’re basically never seeing them. She can also drop 12* units, but their rate is similarly dire. Not comparable to 14*s but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were comparable to Invade Units.

The 14*s

Just gonna go over what is currently known about the weapons. The information out there is still shakey and at times outright self-contradictory. Expect this bit to change as things become more well known.

Kazaminodachi – Increase effect of Katana Gear (12% at lv3) as well as Gear fills up when weapon is unsheathed.

If it’s as it sounds this is potentially fun at least. It means that you’ll be under the effects of Katana gear for longer so you’ll want to be triggering it to get the most out of the weapon. I mean you kind of have to do that anyway, so the only real difference is in theory it’ll be easier to keep the effect up with this weapon.

The below twitter video demonstrates the gear aquisition effect while the weapon is unsheathed during Katana Gear. That’s a sentence that’s gonna make no sense to anyone not familiar with this game… Anyway so yeah as you can the regeneration rate isn’t enough to neutralise the decay, but it does greatly slow it down. The clip shows the regular decay later on in the vid for comparison.

#カザミノタチ　ギア解放中の自動消費量について
ギア解放中に抜刀、納刀及びガードを行ってみましたが消費量に変化はありませんでした。しかし他の刀と比べると消費量が明確に緩和されているのがわかります。手持ちの時計でギアMAXから空まで、カザミノタチが６０秒、他のカタナだと２０秒でした pic.twitter.com/jlwVrsUe7m

— 毛玉P@ship8 (@nonoir_ship8) December 27, 2016

Spread Needle – Increased damage and chance to stun enemies. Also damage increases when you get closer to enemies.

This one’s hard to call because there’s so many unknowns around it. Does the effect apply to Photon Arts? How strongly does the close range damage effect scale? Unfortunately this doesn’t align with the rumoured potential which is unfortunate all things considered. I’ll have to update my opinion on this when we actually know more about it.

It does fire multiple projectiles like the classic Spread Needle, but it’s believed this is just a visual effect and only the regular center bullet is the valid one. Scratch that, it’s not just a visual effect! This makes its basic attacks significantly stronger than any other rifle in the game, potentially.

I still don’t have any numbers to hand, but apparently the “close range” effect kicks in on the same range that Sharpshooter counts from. This means there’s a narrow range in which you can have both bonuses up, which makes it an overall impractical weapon for traditional RaHus. GuRa is probably gonna be the one to get the most out of this weapon, as they can abuse it’s multi-projectile effect on Parralel Slider and One Point the most. This information is still tentative.

Eternal Psychodrive – Confirmed as Boosts Element Conversion’s power, reduces PP consumption
Its Special Ability Factor is “Ability IV”

As far as far as I’m aware the only one confirmed is Eternal Psychodrive with one known drop. Its potential apparently boosts the power of Element Conversion by 50%, which means you get 45% additional damage with matching element instead of 30%. If the element doesn’t match, it’s boosted by 200% so instead of 15% you do 45% damage. So if the stars align and you do get one, you only ever need that one! Now of couse forces can get 30% from element convert with any 13* rod, so really the effective potential is a 15% boost in damage. Boring, but it does mean getting one will free up a few slots in your inventory!

Max potential Gix is allegedly slightly stronger than this, but realistically you’re not going to have that up at all times.

Falz Drops

During the Christmas broadcast it was revealed that the 14*s can actually drop from all old Falz raids and Profound Darkness. However the drop rates in those quests are even lower than they are in Mother’s raid if you can believe that. Still, good to know that they didn’t forget about the old content.

Astra Weapons

The replacement for Austere is here! They’re not really much of a replacement…

Alright I’m being a little unfair. They’re solid weapons, it’s just for something that was heralded as something to topple Austere I was just expecting something a bit more than a tiny bit of extra attack and PP regen. For those who’ve had Austere for months it’s an upgrade you’re barely going to even notice for most weapon classes. For those who haven’t and instead are wielding previous collection file gear such as Gix you might also feel a little underwhelmed. However, their potential is active at all times without stringent conditions that Gix weapons have.

Suppose I should actually say what the potential is:

• 12% additional damage and 40% additional PP recovery on attack.

Their special ability factor is “Phase Recovery” which boosts PP recovered on attack by 5%, so you can put this on your Astra weapon to boost it up to 45%.

The files themselves are pretty generous enough, with a 250% booster meaning you’ll need  to attend something like 18 runs to get a 60% (assuming no cooldown time on the files). The rest of the file can be done in Riding Quests, which are fairly active again because of this. With a 250% booster on you’re looking at 4-5 kills for each boss. The alternative is to see if your target weapon drops from an enemy elsewhere, because it’ll also count towards your file progress is so. As far as I know, for Summoners the only option is the bosses specified. If you’re need Train Ghidorans I’d suggest going to Train Ghidoran’s Arks Quest.

Astra Units

They exist, I assure you. You just might not ever see one if the rates are anything like Invade Units.

Stats:

• S-DEF – 233
• R-Def – 230
• T-Def – 236
• S/R/T-Atk+20
• All def attribute +2%(S/R/T and all element)
• HP+60
• PP+10

Pretty good, overall. They have a set bonus with the weapon and arm unit which grants 60 Dexterity. I don’t know why they bother with set effects that terrible, honestly. If you’re gonna drop Set Bonuses because you’re put off by the idea just drop them entirely don’t half-ass it.

Like the weapons, these can be recolored which is neat!

Ledran

The newest addition to Summoner’s ever-expanding selection of pets. This time though it’s a badass little dragon with moves reminiscent of Panzer Dragoon. Or maybe I’m justing seeing Panzer Dragoon in it because I want to, I don’t know. It has homing lasers!

I don’t really play Summoner enough to give an in-depth so I’ll only go over some factual stuff and the rest is kinda third-hand info.

Personalities

It has two personalities like all the other pets (with rare drop variants of course)

The first is a stacking buff where Ledran’s power increases with every kill by 0.8% / 1.0% / 1.2% / 1.4% / 2.0% up to a rather staggering maximum of a 50% boost. Whats more is according to rumours, this carries across to new areas. The effect is reset on swapping pets or getting into a vehicle however.

The second is a scaling buff which depends on the number of enemies near the pet. It’s 1% / 2% / 3% / 4% / 6% for 1-4 enemies, 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% / 12% for 5+. While weaker than the other personality in total, this one doesn’t require you to kill enemies to generate it. “Nearby” in this case means within its auto-attack range, which is fairly big.

Between the two I think I’d prefer the killcount one, but the other would be superior for raid boss quests where you don’t get the chance to kill anything. That’s just my gut feeling though, I’d need to play the class more to really judge because there might be nuances to either personality that I don’t understand.

Attacks

Ledran Laser

It looks like a homing attack!

It has a homing laser attack which can be charged up. The longer you hold it, the more lasers will lock onto things. I believe it stacks up to 8 lasers, which all deal a moderate amount of damage each. It functions a little bit like Homing Emission in that it can lock on to targets that you can’t. While each individual hit isn’t much, it does charge fast so I feel like it’s an alright mobbing PA so far.

Ledran Slash

A simple melee slash attack which also returns the pet to the user. Helpful for ending its auto-attack but not much else.

Ledran Gravity

Creates a gravity well wherever the projectile lands. Similar sort of effect as Gravity Bomb but I think it persists for a bit longer.

Ledran Burst

Like Ledran laser except it locks on to one target and charges up to 8 projectiles to launch at it. Unlike Laser, each hit is pretty strong making its overall damage fairly high. Useful for high HP single targets and bossing.

Ledran Mine

Not gotten to use this yet, but it places a mine on a target which when detonated by most other Photon Art creates a damaging area (it can’t be detonated by Ledran Slash). This mine works much the same as the Vol Graptor projectile, as in if Ledran is too close to the enemy (launching the projectile inside an enemy hitbox I believe) the mine will disappear even though it displays the hit effect.

This includes Ledran Gravity, so placing a mine then firing the gravity well results in enemies trapped inside the AoE. It’s also apparently fast enough that you can sneak one in before the homing lasers reach their target, allowing you to deal additional damage.

Consensus

Again, this is really third hand stuff but the general consensus I’m getting for Ledran is it’s an overall solid pet. It’s good at both bossing and mobbing (it’s likely inferior to Aero and Maron for bossing power, however), so for Summoner mains or alts this might be a good one to get. Though for a while it’ll be expensive to get one with a different personality than the Collection File offers.

Final Episode of SPECIAL INTERNET PROGRAM

Took few days for them to release it, but here it is in all its dragon smashing glory!

• The video shows 2 encounters with the Vol Dragon, with the first being in a multi-party area.
• The dragon spawns in the stage rather than its own arena. It’s treated like an interrupt event, it seems boss battles are “Code: Duel”.
• We finally get to see the Volcano Caves area in action, which is nice given how the alpha testers who leaked videos seemed to avoid the area entirely.
• The player is a Caseal throughout the entire video.
• The pool you jump into on the Camp Ship changes colour depending on the area the quest is in.
• Lava is still hot.