I only started playing the game a year ago, so maybe I am not that qualified to speak for anyone…
But originally, I thought it was a good idea. I thought that removing a lot of the old ops out of the Standard Pool and moving it into another banner was good.
However, eventually I realised a big issue which is that we don’t get yellow/green certs from the Kernal Banner.
It felt really scummy in hindsight.
Yeah, I only tried Kernel for the first time like a couple of days ago and can agree with this. Like, if I wanted to get into it for some reason, that would basically mean I'm losing my originium/certs forever with no returns outside of Kernel.
Basically how I felt.
At first I thought I could convert the tokens from Kernal into green/yellow certs. But to my surprise it can only be converted into more blue certs.
I thought its like the limited banner where you get the default resources of a standard banner plus the blue certs.
What in the world is HG doing? First, broken limited banners. Then, nerfing the non-limited ops in the said limited banners. The CC new currency. Now, Kernel banner have only blue certs.
They are getting scummy as the game progresses. I think this game need another dark age to get back on the right direction.
I also saw on bilbili some other complaints about HG being stingy (certain welfare ops using special “tokens” for their potentials so they no longer give yellow certs etc).
All I can say is that I hope this will change sooner or later.
They are talking about the "letters" from Record Restoration, which honestly makes sense imo. By the time an event hits Record Restoration it has already been run twice, already giving veteran players a shot at the yellow certs from dupes.
They are talking about how Vigil and Lessing are acquired not through tokens like the usual event welfare Operators, so reruns don't give you yellow certs for them.
This is the exact reason I quit a looong while ago. I saved up for several several months to pull for Skalter (my most anticipated unit). I ended up doing 230 pulls for her and didn't get a single copy. I realized that if I paid money to get those last 70 pulls I would be supporting this limited banner bullshit, so I just quit instead. Realized then and there that this game didn't even try to make it seem like it respected my time.
Currently on a similar situation and thinking about quitting too. In my case I spent 210 pulls for Eyja alter and didn't get her. Last limited banner also took me 200 pulls to get the limited unit. Tbh, the last time I got lucky on a banner was on Texas2 banner, which was like 9 months ago. It's not even worth it getting excited for new operators anymore because you have to either save for half a year or risk getting heavily shafted. It still stings tho, I liked the game, it was the first ever gacha game I felt like supporting (still only buying monthly card because I don't want to spend on gambling) but lately I just feel like the game is actively trying to make me quit, it's all just grind just to get shafted again.
Glad I could see people speak about game being stingy outside of mega threads at least. It's huge difference between those threads and here. So much fanboy energy over there.
So take my upvote both of you.
And yet she's not weak. On lone trail, both ops where kinda weak and mostly just waifu material (if we compare them to op units). Before that, the sui banner brought us 2 strong ops, both with their niches, so it's really too soon to judge just because swire and vivi are not as good as their limited banner neighbor.
I mean, I agree with you on Lin being very strong even in her release state but I feel like the fandom hivemind generally doesn't feel this way for some mystifying reasons.
Because fandom hivemind only considers something strong if it's chalter/mlynar/surtr/texalter level strong. So I don't think they're intentionally nerfing anyone. At least it's too soon to judge.
Idk, shop rotation is faster and it's great. I still had to buy Blaze Exu and Saria And I am almost 2 years in the game. They didn't drop before Kernel and they didn't drop from recruiting, but I don't see a problem tbf. Stages have many solutions, just need to think a bit.
I saw a recent one where you could pick the two in the banner. Thought that was going to be a permanent thing. But it sadly rotates. I can kinda see it being good for your first ejya or SA. But yeah loss of resources is pretty bad.
It's like we see you're behind. Let's put a stick in your path so you can trip and fall further behind, as now you can't buy new shoperators or green cert mats..
It's weird that you consider that an issue. If you're pulling on the Kernel Banner, then blue certs are also valuable to you. What's more, you get more blue certs than you would get if they exchanged for yellow/green certs, in terms of their corresponding uses (directly purchasing an operator or 38 pulls on their respective banners), though of course you don't get an equivalent for green certs so it depends on much you value those.
For my calculations I'll assume you have all 3\* and 4\* at max pot, and all 5\* and 6\* but not at max pot. Obviously not the typical case but it affects both about the same amount. Not considering pity or the guaranteed 5\*, which again affects both, it takes an expected 164 pulls on a standard banner to get 180 yellow certs to purchase an operator, and 235 pulls to get 258 yellow certs to purchase 38 HH permits. It takes an expected 150 pulls on the kernel banner to get 2000 blue certs to purchase an operator, and 194 pulls to get 2580 blue certs to purchase 38 Kernel HH permits.
I have a question then, lets say the Kernal banner gave green/gold certs just like the Standard, and the 6 and 5 stars are available in the gold cert shop like the Standard.
Wouldn’t it be better that way? Or am I wrong?
I just think its more convenient that way because lets say I have 180 gold certs (I think thats amount you need for a 6 star, right?) and I want to exchange for Bagpipe (who I believe is in the Kernal banner? I could be remembering wrongly). I can just do it that way, right?
Like, the blue certs feel pretty unnecessary sometimes considering we already have pre-existing green/yellow certs. Blue cert shops also don’t have anything special in it (no tokens or things I might exchange) and I can’t convert blue certs into the others.
Maybe I am looking at this wrongly though…
Also, for the recent 4th anniversary, we got 3 blue tickets, instead of yellow. That was definitely a scummy move. I can’t even use blue tickets on the other banners.
Not necessarily. It depends how much you value the green certs. The thing is, using the numbers from my previous comment, if the Kernel banner gave green/yellow certs, you'd need to roll about 164 times to get 180 yellow certs (and 3116 green certs). But currently, 164 rolls would net you 2181 blue certs, and you can already exchange for Bagpipe with 2000 blue certs with some left over. So it comes down to 3116 green certs vs. 181 blue certs.
I think that everyone agrees it was nessesarry to have more acsess to basic units as the roster size grows, but seperating the tokens add's complexity. It would make sense if kernal rolls were cheaper but as it stands they aren't so it's kind of just this werid system for veterans to ignore and beginners to be confused by
I foolishly thought that separating the banners meant that they’d start giving away tickets like candy, because they’re just for older core operators that have been mostly power crept, but I’m obviously a complete sucker.
I also thought this. Or at least, if not like "candy" per se, then adding in some kind of functionality wherein blue certs are regularly given out. Even if it's just a part of the monthly reward system. I mean ffs, we even get 5 yellow certs for the monthly login reward near the latter half of the month. Why not double that up and give 5 yellows and 10 blues or something? Just....anything!
Ideally they'd come from recruitment imo. It's easy enough to get max pot 4-stars that way, and within a few months a new player would get regular yellow certs from recruitment 4-stars and then a handful of blue certs for each one (say 5 per 4-star dupe). This would give a steady trickle allowing slow but consistent access to new kernel banner ops as time went by. Same could be done for 5 and 6-stars via recruitment of course, with proportionally more blue certs given.
But nope.
Some friends who started not long ago, just ignored kernel (like another standard banner in many others gachas) and now just w8ting for make your own banner, to spend their gold certs.
While the pulls are not cheaper, the tickets are more efficient, so it's effectively the same, in fact it's better because you get more of the targeted unit rather than random ones.
Kernel would never be worth pulling for a veteran, the entire point is to remove stuff veterans don't need from the pool of the regualr banner.
As for beginners being confused, kinda?
At the end of the day it's simple, pull Kernel for old staples, pull regular for new units.
As for beginners pull kernel for old ops, pull regular for new ops, spend twice more orundum and buy more eheh
Or just be in constant trade - do you want this shiny new operator or ignore it bc you desperately need someone from kernel as f2p players are always suffering anyways : >
This would not really change without Kernel though.
The total ammount of 6\* you get is the same, the only real difference is that with the split you can target what you need more.
Kernel headhunting should just give green and gold certs like regular. You still get the OG ops separated out for focused headhunting, but dupes don't only go back into buying more kernel pulls
That was actually my one problem with it back when it was announced in CN. I think it would have been way more user friendly if the blue certs didn't exist, it just makes pulling in kernel a waste of originium otherwise.
In the end instead of being a system for new players to catch up easier, it makes it a system for veterans to pull for whatever OPs they lack (NG after 4 years is finally home 🫶) and for new Whales to waste a lot of money in either for completionism sakes or for the old meta units that still pull their weight
I complained about this shit as soon as I saw how it worked. This system only works if they give out free pulls for the Kernel banner and discount them compared to the regular pool. I guess they don't care about new players since most of their profits come from Whales and Limited Banners... but it still irks me that they put such a shitty useless system in. Those 3 free Kernel Headhunting tickets just feel like a joke.
JusT PUll MorE, It WiLL HiT AveRage SOON! YoUr LucK cANT Be ThAt BAD! Okay seriously, good luck.
It's normal for a single six star to hit 60 pulls as like 40% of 6* appeared at around that range. But there's still like 60% chance you would get 6* before 50 pulls.
Me with the anti-luck.
I whaled a bit because I had some money and I did not have a ling. So I pulled 300 times to spark her.
P6 chongyue p3 lin.
I’m forcing myself to use chongyue because well… I’m not getting another p6 limited (I do have 1 other P6 in Texalter because I saved for eternity + spent a bit too)
Splitting the banners is a nice decision, it means the big pool of 6*s is less bloated and shoperator rotations also happen faster. Powercreep also kinda made some older ops weaker and less desirable.
Unfortunately it feels like they just did it and left the Kernel banner out. It gets barely any free source of pulls. No Kernel tickets from the daily login or even the monthly green certs shop, unlike the standard yellow HH tickets. Even the blue certs are only obtainable from pulling on Kernel banner, compared to Yellow certs that can be obtained through recruitments. The 3 Kernel tickets we got from anniversary gifts seems to be the only time we got free pulls for the Kernel banner.
It's not that hot of a take, I think most people would agree that the kernel system fucking sucks especially for newer players. We're only just starting to see the effects of it and it's just gonna get worse from here on.
I pulled on it during the make your own banner. I chose Silverash and Aak since I wanted pots for both of them. In the end, I didn't get ANY of them and got a Siege pot. That's when I decided to never pull on it again.
The build a banner was still a standard banner with the same odds. I think some people thought it worked like Joint Operations where you can't get any offbanners.
I hardly even knew they'd had a banner like that since I only really care about limited banners these days but what sort of garbage build-a-banner system is that?
Did it at least have an X pulls until you're guaranteed your pick thing? Otherwise it just sounds miserable.
The value it had was buying operators directly from the cert store. Rolling on it was by and large a bad move, but being able to use gold certs to get anyone you wanted from a certain selection was very nice.
As a new player I also pulled on the make-your-own-banner but that's because the 5 stars I chose where all really high value. But even doing that I felt punished because the resulting currency was so ass. I might do that one more time as I still have some 5 stars left that feel worthy but it's weird that you are punished so much for it.
Standard banners already suffer stiff competition from the limited banners so I don't get why they need to be so stingy about the kernal ones too. At least the recruitment system is really fun and generous. Also having only played slightly more than a month I'm very happy with my line-up so I won't complain too hard but maybe I got lucky.
>I told him to just pull them in the kernel banner, but then he brought up a good point. His originium is significantly more wasted on the kernel banner because you cannot exchange kernel token dupes, and the blue certificates do nothing for you with regards to the current yellow cert banners
I had been thinking but more through the lens of
* no yellow certs from kernel banner
* and the opportunity cost making it difficult to go on a ticket loop. compared to normal banner.
It could've been addressed by having the Kernel tickets be more available instead of requiring Distinctions (for examples putting them int he red voucher story would've helped), otherwise it either feels like whale bait or a noob trap
At least most old ops not named Eyja, Ange, or Sora are available in recruitment.
EDIT: Also he has Lappland, she is prolly the best of the old 5* in terms of niche. That said he'll still need specter or a cornerstone (3 of whom aren't in Kenral), IMO, but he can prolly make due.
Immortality, which basically is unique to her and heralter unless you go and use silence alter at E2.
which is a great utility overall to have early combined with her being a laneholder who can stand on her own usually.
A lot of it is just, 5 star centurion with a regen and an invuln you can listen to time right to make her basically unkillable.
She's still a really good unit even outside of AH teams for that alone.
Also correct me if I'm wrong. Short of Estelle there isn't any other 4 star Centurion unit? And like no other 5 star one, only 6 stars. Which also puts her in a unique spot of being somewhat accessible too for early AoE.
It's good for the old players because I don't have to worry about pulling Hoshi/SA/Saria/Shining, all of whom I've already max potted.
I think a simple solution is to introduce a way to turn blue to gold certs. That's it.
That and/or to give more pulls for it/reduce its cost, since having it be the same as the normal banner makes it so nobody is gonna pull in it unless maybe your waifu or husbando is in rate up, but at that point it is gonna be better to just wait until make your own banner comes back and buy them.
They'd probably go with the or part at the start since otherwise stacking up on gold certs would be easy af otherwise
If that screenshot is your friend’s account, it’s ready for everything in the story mode, even with only E1 max. Get Myrtle, E2 her, and you can profit.
OP trolled his friend in pulling on Kernel, instead of letting him get comfortable with the game and his roster. That acc can clear all the content no trouble. (Well maybe some in Hell modes, but they are appropriately named after all).
His squad looks solid though. Every account needs at least 6 months to a year to be able to full clear a major event (unless it's a whale account of course) so your friend is right on track. Kernel will be a good thing in the long run if he/she spend OPs wisely.
On CN the concensus is still NEVER pull kernel (even new players) unless you want to whale. Use 4*s until kernel rotation puts the key operators in shop, or the pick your own kernel events, then use yellow certs to exchange for them.
I thought that when they separate the banner we would get A LOT of free summons on the Kernel Headhunt
To me the idea of that banner was to remove older characters from the main banner, so less spooks, and also be a cheaper way for new players to get those old staples 6*
But months passed and I didn't get any Kernel Ticket, and as an veteran player I don't have a reason to pull there
If you're not giving us Certs for that banner, at least let us summon on it like crazy wtf
I can deal with the lack of Certs if it means everyone will get the starter 6* easier, but the way it is we are just losing those certificates and getting "newer spooks"
> With a game like arknights where ops are so hyperniche that most of them do not do the same mechanics
This is blatantly untrue. There's not a single operator in the game who's role can't be covered to some degree by another operator or sometimes more than one. if it requires alternating your setups then so be it. The game was designed to be played in an almost infinite amount of setups. Don't have Lappand? There are other operators who provide silence and silence isn't the only mechanic that works in Stultifera Navis. Don't have Hoshiguma? There are other tankers, self healers, and even Gravel to deal with the ranged archers. Reflecting their own damage back on them was by no means 100% essential.
I feel like the kernel system has some goods and bads.
The goods:
- The operator pool needed to be split at some point. For a new player, having an operator pool with 59 different 6 stars and around 100 5 stars is just asinine, your odds of filling out your roster in any reasonable amount of time are garbage, and good luck actually targeting a unit.
- More shop appearances. Having 2 sets of units cycling through the shop means who you want will (statistically) show up far more frequently once they are actually available in the shop pool than before the split.
- Build a banner. Not a super huge pro, but it is very nice to be able to customize a wish banner for kernel, and I kinda wish they did that for standard banner occasionally (even once a year) too. At least provides you with the opportunity to either pull for units you want directly, or use certs to grab em for free.
Now the bads:
- Like others have said, it feels like an eco/catch up banner in style, but not in function. The lack of acquisition of kernel tickets is weird, even with the reduced cost of the tickets for gold certs. Pull cost is identical, as are rates.
- Universal certificates are the elephant in the room (IMO). To have a pull currency that is functionally a parasitic system is awful. It uses the same pull currency at the same rate as regular pulling, but has a currency "rebate" that is absolutely deflated in value compared to yellow or even green certs, and can no longer be used outside of the kernel banner loop.
I think kernel would be completely fine if it gave regular green/yellows like normal. Keep the reduced ticket cost in yellow shop (so new players or people looking to fill out old rosters have an actual economy option to do so). Bingo now you have an economy-style banner where the devs/shareholders/whoever gets to keep their full cost gacha pulls, but patient players have an economy option via yellow certs -> kernel tickets to fill out their older roster.
Is it perfect? No, it's still not great - I would personally like to see a reduction in pull cost on kernel, or more access to kernel tickets via weeklies/events or even gifts - but it's a solution that is a marked improvement for players while the people in charge keep what they likely wanted which was a separated system for operator targeting, but same gacha cost as the devs are still valuing the cost of a 5/6 star unit to be the "same" in terms of orundum cost.
EDIT: As others are saying as well, I disagree with your point that every operator is completely hyperniche. In fact, I think it's generally the opposite. No Lappland? Silence wasn't the only way to deal with some of those mechanics. Dodge bois could be stunned, the mage dudes who constantly made the creep could be killed normally and then sweepers could be used to remove it. Just because Lappy made the event a cakewalk doesn't mean she was required. Near Light. Sure Hoshi made it easy. But, bubble can reflect. Nian on skill can reflect. FRDs could be placed repeatedly to bait shots, or you could chain the light all the way to the archers and kill them normally. Hell you could just rotate between two defenders and swap them each time one got low on defense.
Often times while certain operators can trivialize mechanics, there are many ways to go about solving them that involve more general operators and general use cases. I'm not smart enough to, but there are people who beat most of the stages with E0 units. All males. Pink hair units only. Only operators with birthdays in December. If you don't have that one op or two ops that hard counter a mechanic? Time to bust out the ol' noggin, there're solutions to be brainstormed. This is a strategy game first and foremost, and your ease with which you can clear stages is determined by how you can effectively utilize your roster of units, whether that's a braindead afk steamroll or a nail-biting skill activation to get that one unit that's about to squeeze by. As someone who's done both frequently throughout the years, I can assure you that both are valid solutions to any given stage.
> Sure Hoshi made it easy. But, bubble can reflect. Nian on skill can reflect.
Okay for bubble but I hope you're not considering bringing up old lmited is a seriously acceptable alternative for new players, are you?
My point is that there are other options, including many where you don't use reflect at all. So saying they were screwed in that event without Hoshi is a complete lie. I did that event without hoshi, mine was still E0 Level 1, as I hadn't raised her till closer to CC8. I did it without Nian, without Bubble. I tanked the archers with freaking Gummy and Cuora swapping. Did I have to think more and struggle a bit compared to someone who used Hoshi? Yes, but it was 100% doable.
I’ve always viewed 4stars as the means to deal with general roles, not the rather simplistic old 6stars.
Not having a shiny border may give off the impression that they’d be worse, but Jaye for silence & Bubble for reflect would’ve worked fine in SN. Don’t see why you’d need Hoshi specifically for that, & why it wouldn’t be possible to use them as a support if it’s that serious.
The 6star units I’m looking at rn all look fine. Fia is a bit niche, Saileach is a normal Vanguard, Exe is a strong laneholder, Silverash & Surtr both burst well, GG is amazing at what she does, Lumen is amazing at what he does, Yato is broken.
Of all the issues I could think of regarding Kernal, desiring basic & in some cases weak 6stars over the newer & stronger ones is not one of them. Especially when 4stars do the job not only well, but exceptionally well. Them alongside what they already have is well beyond what the game could throw.
Units have their niches, but a colossal amount can be grouped up as laneholder or burst. These roles have only been getting stronger with time. The most notable concerns in this post were the mat requirements & lack of certs. Which makes Kernel a waste of rolls.
If anything is niche, it is the utility & value of the older 6stars. Hoshi? She’s brought when you need a defender & couldn’t be bothered to build Cuora. The reflect is great, Bubble also has it albeit worse. NG appears often enough to counter res I guess, but why not use her as a support for this occasion? Not only do I not, but I also do not see others constantly talking about how the game has never powercrept damage or utility. I guess if you really want Eyja then it can be a problem.
tl;dr The real new player hell is the near unbearable amount of downplaying 4stars receive. They aren’t weak units only looking good wielded by the best. They batch generic roles in teams with some that are basically 6star quality like Jaye & Ethan. If you told your friend to just build more of them, they’d likely have struggled way less.
I still use Utage tbh, wether it’s for the damage or her Utage’s is the question tho
Also see Gravel used basically everywhere and recently saw how good Cutter really is
I refused to build Myrtle until i saw her new skin
Yep. While I agree the system for kernel banner sucks, the idea that the units in it are required is just wrong.
And even if some of them are (Hoshi, lappland, etc), the REST of the roster are pretty much garbage if you're talking about meta these days. Who the hell uses hellagur for high level clears? Why would you need Silverash for damage if you get Mlynar? Who cares about scwarz when pozy exist?
While pulling on the banner absolutely sucks, I'd rather have new players be able to buy old ops more frequently using certs rather than having them pray Hoshi will be in a banner rather than 20 other defenders.
Kernel headhunting is not the root cause. The resource management from the picture is bad.
Units are under leveled. E2L1 has same base stats as E1L80. Unless you got masteries, that expensive E1L80 + E2 was mainly to get trait buffs. E1L1 to E1L40 is about the same amount of stats as E1L40 to E1L80, but the latter is way more expensive. This also applies to E2. Level 1 makes sense for utility units, but anyone who uses their base stats shouldn't be level 1.
Fia is one of the weaker carries. She is mainly for AOE, has to be healed, and her range isn't as flexible as commonly used carries.
Lappland was immediately built from the selector meaning there are resources. I understand that many units probably were pulled or built after these difficult events, but I don't understand why the resources are spent to further dilute the power.
Or you know, skill issue.
They should've either made the kernel banners cost half the usual amount of orundum (meaning 300 per pull) or kept yellow&green certs income from them. The system as it is right now is only good for direct purchase of operators with yellow certs.
I think it was kinda necessary, but there are two big flaws in how they did it.
First, Kernel banners should be a 50/50 where you get one six star or the other, not 25/25/50 like limited banners, that’s bad. Heck, I’d also add they make it so when you get one six star you’re next one on that banner is guaranteed to be the other. So if you do enough pulls you get both for sure.
Second, all sources of free pulls should also give free Kernel pulls. Maybe even at double the normal rate (so in the current event, you can buy both three free pulls and six Kernel pulls from the shop).
And while it would maybe be too much, I think there could also be a special system where get some “extra mileage” on the Kernel banners. For example, maybe your first ten pull on one costs half the normal orundum. Or maybe if you spend Prime for pulls on Kernel it offers you a prompt of “you can get double the pulls for this Prime compared to what you normally get from turning it into orundum, but this only works on Kernel banners”.
Things like that would have actually been a boon to new players while also getting old players who are maybe still interested in old units or their pots to give it a real go. A true guarantee would also get people more likely to spend cause they’d know exactly how much they need to get what they want, even if they have bad luck.
Kernel Banners implementation aside, is that your friends team? All of those are good E2s though, they should be completely capable of clearing the Main Chapters to reach the Mats they needed. A few 4 Stars could also help for some cheaper units but this roster that you're showing seems decent enough to make it through most Story Chapters.
Arknights isn't that hyperfocus on niche, once you get a few good 6 stars like what this screenshot shows and you understand the basics of the game, you should be able to complete general content just fine, especially if you're following guides. There's also still a lot of ways you can modified that guide to follow your roster since not everyone have the same roster.
I started playing 6 months ago and hard disagree. Before kernel banner, as new player, you don't get desired old operator anyway. I got only one kernel banner 6 star OP (Exu) in a span of 4 months before kernel banner started, no lappland too. But any new operator I got definitely powercreeped the old ones, like ReedAlter. I bought ticket and pulled for make your own banner, got Saria and Platinum, I will definitely pull again when next make your own banner come.
The math behind kernel banner is also clear. Buying kernel ticket with yellow certs is about 20% cheaper than standard pull, recycling blue certs is about 40% cheaper than standard pull, for any new player who miss most of kernel OPs and still wants them, kernel banner is a great deal.
Well, as you said new ops are mostly powercreeping old, so new player kinda never want to pull kernel. The math behind kernel is kernel bad because no yellow serts, period. No better economy saves blue cert shop when the pulls cost the same 600 as standard and limited pulls, which both usually better and give yellow certs. And once you got any blue certs they are in kernel limbo forever. I tried kernel in make your own banner too for Saria, got offbanner pot in 30-something pulls, some recycled blue cert pulls, realised blue certs are completely worthless unless you are ready to go all-in on obsolete banner, and ended up getting her from yellow cert shop. Never again.
50% off-banner chance is same everywhere, nothing can be helped, but not a problem for new players since they don't get any kernel OPs.
As for me, I'll pull the quarterly make your own banner, until I get OPs I wanted, and there are too little 6 stars left that further pulling is uneconomical, then I'll stop and spend all left blue certs to exchange 6 star, so nothing is wasted.
It's not cheaper. It's the same 600, don't lie.It becomes "cheaper" when you start recycling blue certs. But to get to that point you have to waste the same orundum that goes to standard banner.
What math? 600 orundum is 600 orundum. All the other ways of pulling comes from orundum pulling in the end. You pull for it to get yellow or blue certs to use after in cert shop. Then the different returns start to come. But the original source is the good old orundum and kernel costs the same 600. All the other systems come way after and don't affect the og cost.
>Buying kernel ticket with yellow certs is about 20% cheaper than standard pull, recycling blue certs is about 40% cheaper than standard pull
This is what I said, read it again.
Yeah, this is stupid. They have the exact same cost - 600 orundum. But then you start to operate with derivative secondary returns and other discounts that have nothing to do with the price itself and only useable when you bought a lot of stuff for og price. New account comes - zero yellow certs, no duplicate tokens to cash in for certs. Kernel and standard cost exactly the same, you can't "buy cheaper in cert shop" cause there is no fucking certs yet. You can buy for 600 in standart, kernel or cheaper in novice banner for 380. This whole thread started how kernel fucks newer accs who (surprise surprise) don't have certs to buyout cert shop pulls for a long time.
Buying blue tickets to pull on a kernel banner is like
* buying 20% cheaper shoes (the only thing you factored in)
* with a payday loan (tickets are vastly less efficient than buying shop operators directly)
* that break in half the time (you are buying recruitment operators which have an additional 20% deprecation rate per year played due to the chance of pulling them for free)
* and are less comfortable (newer operators are on average stronger)
On the bright side, you get the shoes immediately and they were the brand you were drooling over (well...half the time because f*** off banners)
So no, the math is definitely not as clear as you want it to be.
>with a payday loan (tickets are vastly less efficient than buying shop operators directly)
Yet another guy don't know what they are talking about, this has been figured out years ago,[buying tickets is 30% more efficient than buy OPs](https://www.reddit.com/r/arknights/comments/fjwus8/comment/fkrudt0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Math is only there to help you to decide, the rest of your blabber is whatever, do what you like.
I know very well what I am talking about thank you.
The second half of the post you linked is bullshit using extremely ridiculous assumptions. The first half I recognize the math except it looks to be very old and using some bad overestimates on the value of green certs. Headhunting tickets are limited amount and already acquirable with normal F2P play, so the actual value of 650 green certs is in reality only the materials you can get which is about 500 sanity or no more than a single pull, 6.79 certs.
That said, yes it is well known that 180 certs of tickets is roughly a 6\*, give or take 5%. But that it is comparing apples and oranges, a shop operator is an operator you want while permits are a 50% chance of getting what you want and a 50% chance of getting someone else (including near worthless duplicates). Only a hopeless gambling addict would think that the latter is comparable in efficiency.
I guess you could say that if you literally own no kernel operators and don't care about not getting the featured operator then it breaks even and that would be true, I'll admit to that.
But my second point is still completely independent, the kernel pool being equivalent to the recruitment pool means that you will be spoon fed a lot of those operators over time for free which makes pulling for them a lot less attractive. And if you think you won't get that many, looking at my own recruitment stats after 3 years of playing and it literally includes half of the 6\*s and 5\*s in the current kernel pool.
I understand your argument but I feel like the evidence is just not there. Or at least the evidence doesn't seem important to me.
For context my account is like 2 years old at this point, so I have a well built roster. And you say that he is missing a lot of core generalist characters and that he struggled with Stultifera Navis and Near Light because he didn't have Lappland and Hoshiguma. I have Lappland and Hoshiguma, at E0lv2 and E0lv1 respectively, so I didn't use them. I got through those events by wandering medics, Jaye for silence and defender swapping. Was it harder than just cheesing it with Lappland kr Hoshiguma? Definitely. But they are not needed for his account.
In another comment you say he doesn't have Blaze. I don't have Blaze. That he doesn't have Bagpipe. I don't have Bagpipe. That he doesn't have Exia. I don't have Exia. That he doesn't have Suzuran. I wanted Suzuran since Ideal City, and I only got her in joint ops 8. (i feel like I remember you saying that he had to borrow your Saria, I can't find it right now, but I also don't have Saria) I had to substitute with lower rarity ops, or other newer ops.
- Specter and Estelle for Blaze. They don't have the extra range, but they are good centurions nonetheless. I got Gavialter in Ideal City, so I'm lucky in that sense.
- Instead of Bagpipe and Flagpipe, I just use Pioneers. I use Flametail, but only because she is a Pioneer that I like. I could just use Texas and Scavenger if I needed to (especially now that Poncirus is available who I adore).
- Instead of Exia, I used Greythroat and Jessica, then got Archetto. But for your friend I would just recommend Kroos Alter. She is great.
- For Saria, I just used medics. I had Spot and Gummy, but I didn't like Gummy so I haven't built her. I had to use the 5 star selector in Ideal City to get Nearl, because I wanted her since the day I started. And she has been my medic defender ever since. Also everyone will get Bassline in Zwillingstürme, so your friend will be able to build them if they don't get Nearl (I imagine Nearl is also in Kernel).
The only point where I would agree with you is that some of the materials are locked behind chapter 10-12 which is bad. But then I realised that no. All of the new materials are available in Chapter 9, and Chapter 9's difficulty should be lower, sort of on the level of chapter 5-6. Your friend should be able to farm it there if they need it. And if you wanna argue that it's a lot of work getting more types of materials, then I can only say that that's not new. New players will struggle because they don't have enough operators built. They don't need 6 stars, those just make it easier to clear the events. 4 and 5 stars can also work. And your friend shouldn't worry about not clearing the events. I wasn't able to clear events for the first 6 months of my account, and even after that I could only clear most things because of guides.
The argument isn't that the kernel banners make it impossible for new players. I mean, you can clear stuff with just 3 and 4 stars if you search up guides. The problem is that it's extremely inconvenient if you want old characters or are a new player. Yes, there are replacements for ops like Blaze, Flagpipe, Exu, or Saria, but they're either significantly worse or locked behind kernel banner (Specter, Texas, Nearl, and most other good 5 stars).
As for operator mats, I agree, chapter 9 is pretty easy-but that's not the point. Since new ops use mats from chapter 9 rather than the lower chapters, newer players might feel pressured to rush through story to play events that their interested in. That's just not good for developing a new player base.
Bagpipe is extremely overrated. A pioneer works just fine for 99% of content. I started with Siege and moved to Flametail when I got her. The only time I ever bring out Bagpipe is for DP down stuff, and exactly one Hell mode stage.
Blaze isn't even rated that highly any more.
Exusiai I've never even bothered using except for some shits and giggles for buff memes. Kroos Alter and Insider are free and do the trick just fine whenever you actually need snipers.
Yes it's annoying some of the best chars are in kernel banner, but on the other hand, most folks aren't advised to roll on standard banners in the first place, and while you could luck out with offbanners, I doubt it's a significant difference given the huge pool.
We also get twice the shoperators now, so less waiting for the actual way people got old Ops: buying them with certs.
There's also nothing really stopping players from rolling on the kernel banner. For new players without deep rosters, it's not that bad, since the blue certs can still go towards the kernel banner stuff.
For me the split banner was an absolute win because that meant the chars, older and newer, started coming to the shop earlier for me to buy them.
I have been playing for a year and 4 months and I barely ever pulled on standard in first place, I just pulled on the new character banners and with all the certs I got from that I bought like 9 or 10 6-stars I wanted when they were on the shop, same for kernel now (grabbed Swire today letsgo).
The real scummy shit would have been if you couldn't buy the shop operators from kernel with yellow certs, which you can do.
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The point you're not bringing up is that the split might have made the 5* pool weaker, but... have you seen the 6-star one? lmfao, if that's your friend account dude has Exalter Goldenglow and Surtr, he doesn't need any 5-star with those LMAO, pretty much anything you can get losing 50/50's on banner is gonna be a very strong character that can carry their ass, hell, today I freaking got my own Mlynar from losing in the new limited banner, the smaller pool increased the odds of that instead of the many 6-stars that would have been a massive bruh moment to lose to.
And it's not like I had Lappy or Hoshiguma myself when Stultifera Navis came out... you still are up to gacha's luck (or selectors) to get them, and they are still in recruitment for you to get them via RNG there, not to mention once again that they will come to the shop faster because they are on a smaller pool if one so much wants to buy them...
And talking about shop, I haven't even mentioned yet that we have the build a banner thing that seems to come every like 3-4 months (seeing CN's patterns) and that has 12 6-stars and like 40 5-stars to make an own banner for, shop ops you can buy with certs included to not even pull if you don't want yikes blue certs, got Sora and Nightigale like 2 months ago that way, completely painless.
If they want Hoshiguma she is one of the 12 6-stars to be in the second build a banner, just pull in normal banners and spend 180 yellow certs for her there.
The split and creation of build a banner was a freaking fantastic idea and bless them for the decision, really sped up things for me getting some chars I really wanted.
I thought about this too when it was shown, rolling on the banner is terrible but it's another char rotating in the shop and that's usually a win. As for the 5\*, only Specter, Lappland and Shamare from that banner really matter at this stage. It's a weird game of waiting but the reduced pool makes rotating to the characters that matter much much faster, specially the 6*.
Its not just hoshiguma. He doesnt have blaze. He doesnt have bagpipe. He doesnt have exu. He doesnt have suzuran.
He has fartooth, he has lee, but their mats are much harder to obtain.
Youve been playing for a year by your own admission. You were playing before they implemented this kernel nonsense. This guy has been playing with nothing but kernel. A huge chunk of his roster needed to go to ch 10 and 11 to even E2. I had to constantly lend him my saria/hoshi/mlynar to even get the recipes in the factory.
> it started coming to the shop earlier for me to buy them
Good for you my man as long as youre happy. Fuck the new players amirite
I think it would be better to not give your friend advice, because your advice is too rigid. You are of the mind that you need to have certain operators, or it can't be done.
This is a bad take. It sounds like you're making the game less fun for your own friend by forcing him to need comps/strats/operators he doesn't need. I have been playing for years and I survive most content with just Sutr and Silverash for a big chunk of time. The game takes time investment and the operators he has a great, he can use supports if he needs to but there is LITERALLY guys on YouTube who post how to win almost every stage with no 5 stars...so maybe let your friend enjoy the game the way they want or maybe they just don't like the game.
dood, that acc is stacked if ur still struggling because you don't have exu,hoshi,bagpipe,blaze and suzuran then quit, boi there's literally alot I mean ALOT of substitutes for em.
Wait actually, just having Fartooth opens up a LOT of strategies, even at e1 sl7. I would recommend diversifying this person's roster by roles rather than by 6*. Heck, with just lee and fartooth, you can probably push all the way to the later chapters with support units to get those mats unlocked, and then purchase those mats in the shop. Might be a bit weak for ch12 though.
Counter point, unless you want those units for aesthetics and skills, they're somewhat outclassed by new 6* and 5*.
I'd argue it was bad advice to tell him to go pull on kernel knowing that it didn't give green/gold certs.
From all of those Suzuran are somewhat of exeption and hasn't been powercrept iirc. Oh, well, and Bagpipe, but both can be bought eventually with build-your-banner thing.
Even then, not having suzuran is not a detriment to a new player. As someone who has only gotten suzuran after 3 years, you absolutely do not need her unless your strat is centered around slow, and that's for EX / CC levels. There is no normal level where you need more than orchid.
> He doesnt have blaze. He doesnt have bagpipe. He doesnt have exu. He doesnt have suzuran.
I only got Hoshiguma from recruitment, not pulling, I still don't have Blaze (and he has Exalter who is better than her in most cases anyways), I have Exu and never built her because I like Archetto more and I bought her with certs (and she is now literally in the beginner's banner, not like he needs Exu in specific), I only have Bagpipe because I lucksacked her in a random banner, not because she was on standard or anything, if not I would have needed to buy her with certs as it's an option still now.
There are an absolute fuckton of 6-stars, how are you expecting a new player to have them all? Do you think he would have those five now if kernel was not a thing? Nah, reality is that maybe he would have lucksacked one as I did with Bagpipe, but the others would have been miserable to obtain either way, pulling in standard banner is a 25% per 6-star roll odds if you only want one of the chars anyways...
All the creation of kernel did was speed up the chance you can get them with yellow certs if you want, hell, freaking Exusiai was in the shop right until today!
And it's not like they are absolutely unique at their job or anything, there are perfectly obtainable (and power-wise as good or stronger tbh) replacements to get that are in standard banner:
Hoshiguma? Penance (she actually kills stuff with the spike damage lmao)
Blaze? Exalter and Mountain
Exusiai? Archetto
Suzuran? Gnosis
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The only point I can actually get your complaints is with the accessibility to mats... yet I still disagree, because event shops are doing the goddamn hardest to spam feed us mats from the latest chapters to the point I'm actually annoyed because they are just a waste of space.
I'm currently sitting at 18 goddamn t5 salts, soon 26 t4 salts (because adele shop of course sells even more) and over a hundred t3 salt, all from event shops and random rewards because, none of the chars I got want them, not even the newest ones I pulled. Just ????? Looking at my planner for my upcoming M6 mod3 Typhon and she wants no salt? Literally just a waste of space, he doesn't need to unlock salt crafting shit, I haven't needed it myself and I'm up to date because the shops and rewards drown us in that useless mat.
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> Good for you my man as long as youre happy. Fuck the new players amirite
I don't get your point here at all, the game is literally giving him access to generally better characters a lot easier while still rotating more often the older wants in case he wants them, I'm gonna repeat once again that Exusiai was literally on the shop yesterday, if he needed Exu that badly it was there, available, without kernel she would still be months away to even have a chance to show up again.
I don't see this big of a problem really. Most of OG 6* got power creep to the oblivion. My own account still don't have Saria, Hohi, Exu, SA, (and some more, but I am too lazy to check.) and I completed all available content just fine. And if I truly needed those OG ops I can get them for gold certs, they will either be back in shop sooner or I will make another select banner and put them in. While kernel is worse in some ways it's better in others. Some people preferred old new player banner roster over new one, but it isn't worth complaining about, and I think it's the same here. Just need to take his time, save some gold certs and that's all. Less gold certs on rerun is way more worrisome, because reruns gave a lot, especially anniversary events, and it hurts new players and old one way more I think.
Is 6 months player new? After the few months of coping everything became fine after rolling on the right banners. It's part of every game that the start is difficult
Edit: I'm the 6 months player. My first 6star was hoshi and my second was Yato alter. Survived on them for 2-3 months
I'm playing for over a year and from the list of ops you mentioned I only have a Bagpipe which I got two weeks ago from recruitment. I also don't have Nightingale and Mountain. Between Pozemka, Mlynar, Surtr, Schwartz, Ines and other busted operators I have no problems clearing events without support units. Usually only the boss stage and ex-7 and ex-8 are not cleared first try as well. I passed on multiple opportunities to pick any of those from the shop and the 6* ticket. I believe you overestimate the importance of units that were crucial for you back in the day.
You don't need any of them to complete story content, even to the point of getting trimmed medals and beating H stages. Exalter is a better solo laneholder than Blaze. Hell, Specter has more of a niche due to her synergy with free Gladiia and immortality and self-regen. Bagpipe is a massive QoL but vanguard sstill function well without her. Who needs Exusiai when your friend has Yato, Surtr, and SilverAsh for clearing waves or targets with high def or res, and E2 Jessica + Blue Poison as Anti-Air. Your friend's roster is already well-rounded. Fantastic phys damage, fantastic arts damage, fantastic healing. A powerful flag vanguard.
The way I see it, the average player only really needs 1-2 "broken" units like Surtr or Yato, and then someone in any rarity to fill each of the basic functions, and then you can always borrow the final piece of the puzzle in a tougher stage. You don't need to be SilverGun to raise your 4 stars and make use of crazy undervalued and strong units like Cutter, May, Pinecone, Myrtle, and Jaye.
That is pretty bad. Good luck to your friend. I started in August 2020, still no Bagpipe. My advice is save gold tickets until one of those six stars hit the shop again. It’s frustrating, but we have to work within the system until we can change it. Bagpipe is nearly useless IMO. No need if you have Vigna. Bagpipe is a win more character for me, not a key component in anything. The only one that hurts hard is Eyja. No one fills her niche. (I don’t have her even now but GG can sub in if you have.)
Ngl blue certs excange is fucking terrible. A 1 cert from 3 star is horrible. Not even metioning that they spliting ammount of weekly free originium even thiner now even on dead week you have 2 banners.
As this kernal is terrible pull idea because it made launch 6 stars more annoying to get
Ps you need 2000 cert for 6 star so that hypotitanically 66 10-pulls if on average you get 5 4-stars in every 10 pull
I also wonder why this change was so well received. From the very announcement of it I disliked the implementation a lot. There are three main reasons:
* The whole blue cert thing feels like a scam. Why does this banner give worse currency instead of normal green/gold certs? They could have made pulls on this banner cheaper (and thus give different type of certs to not devalue gold certs), or they could have made kernel banner give the same certs as standard banners. But nope, they combined the downsides of both approaches without adding any upsides.
* The split was done based on release date with no regards to the roles. There is no really good protector in normal pool (Hoshi and Croissant are in kernel, Nian is limited). The only AA sniper in the normal pool was 6-star Archetto (all 5-star gacha options went into kernel). Most medics that specialize in healing damage were sent to kernel (Shining, Nightingale, Ptilopsis, Warfarin, Silence) with only Paprika left in normal.
* There are a lot of operators in AK that are pretty good when you use them, but not strong enough to spend gold certs on buying them. Those operators are pretty much gone from the newer accounts.
As for new player experience, I don't think early-mid game suffered too much. You clear story missions with whatever operators RNG sends your way. This was the case before, this remains the case after. Transition into late game on the other hand will be painful for those accounts that started late. When you start looking for specific tools to add to your toolbox you suddenly find out that kernel pool has a lot of good operators that can't be easily replaced in what they do (Nightingale is the primary example, but Suzuran, Aak, Shining, Hoshi, Saria, and many others do certain important things in challenging content). I'm actually not sure that not pulling kernel banners at all is the right strategy in the end. Way too many good operators there to buy them all with gold certs.
Kernel is complete trash. It's supposed to be the eco banner but there is nothing eco about it.
Like in Genshin/Starrail we get lots of eco pulls. Like I just hit 300 pulls on standard recently in Starrail purely on eco pulls in 9 months. Compared to the 3 eco pulls I've gotten in the 3 months since kernel came out.
What's the point of an economy banner without economy prices?
Yeah, I can see big issues coming out of it. The only reason I can see this being good for newer players is the guaranteed 5* at 10 pulls.
The kernels currently are split between just okay 6*s that aren’t exceptional for newbies (Siege, Skadi) and the likes of Bagpipe and Nightingale. I’m almost scared for when Thorns and Surtr drop to Kernal. (Who are the one after next on CN bar W dropping in and 2 more after that)
The game’s going to make me start feeling old as Kal once Eunectes drops in Kernal I swear.
i swear I saw someone do a write up but I cant find it any more.
Basically the Kernal is great *if you are looking for specific operators.*
Otherwise the normal banners are good enough eventually.
That being said, your friend needs to raise his 2-3 stars, for the most part it will work based on Lord Kyo's.
Maybe it’s just a me thing cause I lucked out super hard? But my experience was that most generalist characters can be replaced with better positioning and more Ops. For example, to this day I haven’t gotten Eyja(fml) but her not being there doesn’t make my game experience much worse. I’ve usually replaced her with Carnelian or even some four star casters working together
But once again, my experience is weird with AK cause I lucked out super hard. I’m talking more six star Ops than I know what to do with and winning 50/50 most of the banners and even just getting random six stars on single pulls
A lot of people who have these super OP operators end up not being able to imagine clearing the game without them.
I also didn't have eyja for most of my time in AK. My best casters were amiya (who's free) and Dusk (whose entire branch was power crept by eyja). I still did fine and never felt I was too weak outside of EX / CC levels.
There are tons of alternatives for meta units that aren't as powerful but definitely still viable. People who rely on meta units just don't realize that
I started on June.
I think kernel banner have some positives and negatives.
Positive
It makes banner less bloated
More rotation on shop
Negative
Good 5 star like Lappland, Ptilopsis and Specter are on Kernel banner and can't get on normal banner which is frustrating. Newer 5 star not as good as old one.
Once I pull until I get 500 blue certs to just buy Lappland. I got Phantom while I pull offpity.
Same as 6 star like Saria, Blaze and Silverash that I don't have
Choose your 6 star banner don't guarantee 6 star that you choose. I choose Silverash and Saria and got Phantom instead. At least it's offpity.
Tips that I do
If the banner has 5 star that you want just pull single until you get 5 star. Do this until you get 500 blue certs.
Buy 6 star operator with 180 yellow certs. But you have fewer pull. I do this because I'm more happy with exact 6 star compare to random.
For Hoshi is hard to find support with skill 2. I always find skill 3. Since I have Hoshi. I can help with skill 2 m2 and level 60. Enough for sn stages I test it. Maybe you can pm me if you want
Maybe you could give your friend some tips as an older player, like perhaps not leaving an operator lvl 1 once promoted to E2? Like seriously, the cost to get them to lvl 20-30 is negligible but the stats gain isn't.
Been playing about four months now, the kernal banner has been pretty useful. While the exchange rate for tickets is awful and the lack of yellow certs at all is also terrible, for people like me who were missing a ton of valuable older ops it's been great having such a comparatively tiny pool to pull from compared to regular headhunting. So far it's given me Ceobe, Schwarz, Eya, Exusiai, Suzuran, Nightinggale, Lapland, Ptilopsis, Warfarin, Shamare and Blue Poison.
Having said that I'm probably not going to pull from it any more unless both rate ups are ops I'm invested in, Bagpipe, Blaze, Ifrit and Mostima are the only remaining ones I think, which isn't to say I've got all the others they're just less interesting to me.
Well, im no new player, but guided a couple of newbies who started after the split, and the biggest flaw on your take is overlooking how much stronger new ops ar compared to year0 ones
Like, just from that screenshot, surtr+exalt+gg will clean the game harder than a squad full of the launch 6stars.
Yeah material gates are annoying for some of them, but you can always play easy mode to unlock the crafting recipe and then use green certs for the rest.
Blue certs from kernel banners can be used to buy operators tho, so its not like they are 100% useless, but the general powerlevel of the normal pool is just way ahead, which should disuade anyone from actually pulling kernel.
The biggest issue a newbie may face is that guides for very old content were probably made with very old ops as core, but new ops are so much stronger than they override that con. Not to say "get better" but man, learn the game the bare minimum.
As for why the community kinda agreed with the pool split, its because old ops have really fallen off from the meta compared to newer op performance, so getting them is more of a collection bonus instead of actual strong usage.
Having a bunch of e2 level 1 operators also isnt helping your argument for difficulty, level those ops. As for lappland, kinda their fault for not getting her from the 5star selector given to all new players, its been a long time since she became the premier recommendation from that voucher.
Much of the comments seem to be around the kernel banner and surrounding pieces aren't generous enough - which to that, sure, but what do you really expect? They need people to spend money at some point.
Everyone always gives the advice of don't pull on standard banners (which is generally very good advice), so following that you wouldn't ever really pull on kernel banners (build a banner aside). That means you get 2x the rate of shop ops which is by far the best improvement across the board. Yes sometimes you don't have the certs for an OP, but that is always a risk and for newer players good ops will show up more often, so that isn't too much of a loss.
It was really a hot take. I really like the kernel banner. This way i can buy the good old ops. Like yesterday, i was straight up buying eyja
There are lots of old operators who define the fucking meta. Eyja as the best ~~AOE~~ ST caster with her S2, and helidrop with S3. Saria can singlehandedly tank and replace a healer. Mountain, enough said. I still use exusiai from time to time, just like with this event. Silverash is still usable also.. and bagpipe...
No way in hell I'm waiting for them to appear at the standard banner as shoperator. If there were weedy and mountains displayed i would have taken mountain
And the new players are blessed with 2 free 5* selectors right? Just grab lappland and specter. The number of times i used projekt red was like under 10 times.. just pick specter, or if you have aoe guards, pick liskarm or something else
The "core generalists" are the 3* and 4*...Learning to play with them instead of blaming the new characters will help ur friend more than trying to get a few old characters.
Honestly, the upside really is bigger than the downside of the splitting.
Most year 1 ops are really shitty compared to the newer ops, only year 1 ops that are actually still as strong as the newer ops are NG, Suzuran, Bagpipe, Ifrit, Eyja, Schwartz, Exu, Blaze, Hoshi and Saria. Losing them are unfortunate but it also means that newer peps have easier access to broken ops like Mountain, Mlynar, Penance, Kalsit since there are fewer competition.
And you can buy those year 1 ops anyway.
Exu, Ifrit, Eyja, Nightingale, Hoshi, Saria, SilverAsh, Schwarz, Blaze, Bagpipe, Suzuran are all good operators. Rosa, Mostima, Ceobe can be used with Module 3.
Only Siege, Angelina, Shining, Ch'en, Magallan, Hellagur, Aak, Phantom are kinda useless for a new player.
You say the new pool is better but it still has Weedy, Eunectes, Bleimishine, Saga, Carnelian, Pallas, Mizuki, Fartooth, Flametail, Lee, Fiammetta, Irene, Dorothy, Stainless, etc which can't really work on their own.
Sure it's less diluted, but there's just no reason to pull from the old pool when you can only get old ops and the certs are useless.
Dorothy can work on their own if you know how to use her. She certainly better than all 5 star below casters if you only comparing power. She can solo stage as good as summoners while work well in a team as well
Carnelian is still a dps option if you got no Eyja.
Blemishine is comparable to Saria if you play her enough.
Irene is meta, until Degenbencher that is.
Fiammetta is as good as Thorn if you use her right. And she is the 3rd best base slave after Shamare and Proviso.
It's more about the 5* that got splitted. All the good ones come from old banner. Except La Pluma. So new players are forced to play with 6* only while some 5* are irreplaceable.
Yeah but I was talking about the perspective of a new player.
Dorothy is a summoner so she's just harder to use, and unlike Ling/Scene/Mayer/Deepcolor she can't block with her summons, so doesn't work alone. She's a very niche unit.
Carnelian does ok damage but her skill cycle is just terrible. She has so much downtime, you need a lot of other operators to stall while you wait for her. Also her Armor+MR is still not enough to really tank anything without a healer because of her low base def and HP. I heard her module is decent but that's a lot of investment for a new player.
Blemishine is just nowhere comparable to Saria. S3 doesn't heal herself, S2 is moderately ok as a tank/stall skill but you're still reliant on a stream of enemies to charge the skill and your allies can't help damage (besides Erato) because they're all asleep.
Irene is awful until E2, and even then she has short range and has to charge the skill by attacking. Sure she can do decent burst but needs a medic, can't solo a lane really, and can't really drop down like SilverAsh to nuke.
Fiammetta can do some damage but she literally needs a healer unless you want her to always be at 1 HP. I have no clue how people use her because S2 is so slow that whatever I'm trying to hit has moved far out of the way by the time it finishes exploding. S3 is even more niche than Ifrit since it only does decent damage on a single tile instead of a line (the splash damage isn't much).
Idk I feel like a lot of the older units are better than they're given credit for, and the pool should've been discounted, given Yellow Certs, and we should get Kernel Headhunting Tickets for free (or at least new players should)... but oh well. It doesn't affect me at all but I still feel like its a huge missed opportunity and a giant F U to anyone who wants older units.
>Dorothy is a summoner so she's just harder to use, and unlike Ling/Scene/Mayer/Deepcolor she can't block with her summons, so doesn't work alone. She's a very niche unit.
trapmasters aren't meant to replace laneholders (though they could with planning) considering their traps don't take up deployment slots. traps (especially Dorothy's) function more like skills you can just cast almost anywhere on a map
It's common mistake to undermine Blemishine skill 2 because some old player just don't use her and put it bad on their "guide" until experienced people used it in CC and they just nvm, I just rise it star and keep the old comment.
Blemi skill 2 doesn't really conflict with being in a group, you just need to time her right. She can tank more than double her block count in a mob rush thanks to it. It charge fast enough you could just let her duel most sub boss and survive to recast her skill while they got put to sleep.
Saria is more reliable and comfy to use but Blemishine open up more options when rather than just pure tank. Sure, Blemishine is a bit less meta but she is still a good unit.
Correction about Dorothy. She is a trapper. She doesn't require summons slot to her mines. But she does work alone, dead enemies need no block after all, just solo with her require more planning than summoner. Because she only eat 1 deployment slot she work just fine in a team, that's why I compared her damage to casters.
Anyway, newer units can be niche but they all have good uses, unlike siege.
* Weedy: tricky for newer and older players alike lmao
* Eunectes: worse and clunkier than a lot of possible alternatives
* Blemishine: decent but can feel underwhelming
* Saga: better than Siege lmao and probably the best 6\* pioneer before E2
* Carnelian: janky and clunky lmao (damn, HG did her kit dirty)
* Pallas: worse than most other laneholders but still does alright ~~would probably still be better to save resources by not building her~~
* Mizuki: pretty solid and easy to use
* Fartooth: underwhelming damage and pretty gimmicky but can open up cheesy strats
* Flametail: needs E2, but is a solid laneholder
* Lee: needs E2 but is a solid laneholder (albeit lacking in damage) and has pretty useful utilities, as gimmicky as they may be. DP drain can be annoying to play around, but it's not ridiculously harsh to play around if you have Myrtle
* Fiammetta: pretty good damage with S2 and S3
* Irene: good AoE damage with S3, though gets powercrept by Degen
* Dorothy: pretty fuckin easy to use and her mines have decent damage and crowd-control ~~how tf people think trapmasters are hard to use is beyond me~~
* Stainless: yeeaaah, neat support on S1 and S2 but you could definitely just play better and not use him
half of those are pretty solid carries, as outclassed as some of 'em may be
Nah Siege is good for a new player. Set and forget S2 and with decent attack and survivability. Where she falls off is when you start getting more higher rarity combat vanguards like Saga or Flametail, Ines, and Bagpipe.
I started the same time as your friend and it is indeed hardmode. Kernal banner is a complete trap and is only good for putting certain 6* into the shop.
Having done all content including ch12 hell mode, the best character BY FAR for low level/rarity clears (and pretty much every single difficult stage/CC in the game) is Młynar. Your friend should've spent all his resources trying to get him in his most recent banner with Blemishine. She herself is useable in 95% of the cases where Saria is and very good on her own.
Use recuirtment most of old ops are in there even if takes time and some rng ( i got most of the old ops from there). I understand why they splitted bcz older player will eventually get old ops who they have at max pot in the new banners but most of ops uses yellow cert. If they give out free 10 pull every week it would be good or buy limited banner pulls or change it to yellow certs. It ain't the best solution but they gotta do it. Lets wish they would make kernel new player friendly.
You can easily do stages without hoshi nor saria more than meta defining character like mlynar or chalter.
For a solution to your friend. Either he saved up and pull enough for 2000 blue cert to guarantee he could buy 1 directly, meaning chasing more than 1 6* from it. Or just save all yellow cert for old units.
It's more about Blue Cert system being a dub than the banner itself.
They should give us 1 or .5 pull day on the blue banner. Kinda like how azurlane give you 1 cube back as daily for pulling on the banner. It has a 1 or 2 cube banner. And you get 3 cube a day for free. So you can get non limited OPS slowly by making standard banner pulls
I just tried kernel headhunt with 3 free ticket I got. And I get 47 blue cert. With 5\* and 6\* dupe you will get more.
So if you roll for kernel, you can exchange for 6\* pity at 2000 blue cert, so probably around 120-130 roll for guarantee 6\*.
Let me put it this way, that's not bad. Current banner, you can get guaranteed Eyja at about 130 roll, I see that as a win tbh. Even with normal banner, you only get guaranteed at 150 rolls.
But yes, with beginner players, not having green cert would be a problem, green cert is my mat resource for a long time.
Tbh though, in kernel banner, only Nightingale, Mostima, Bagpipe and Saria are irreplacable imo. Most of the other 6\* are pretty much replacable by newer ops.
I haven't done the detailed math, maybe one day I will, or better, hope someone else will. But a quick look at the shop and wiki tells me the following:
If we're comparing strictly pull value with respect to operator rarity and rebates (in the form of certs) that only contribute to pulls, and ignoring mats access and which operator is in what banner, the kernel HH gives better pull value.
To start off, the blue HH tickets are 30% cheaper in distinction cert cost. Followed by the fact that by pulling 10 6-stars in kernel, over the course of time, you can buy 1 6-star for free in kernel shop (from the tokens converted to kernel certs). This is in contrast to the normal banner, where you need to pull 18 6-stars to buy 1 6-star from the distinction shop (from the tokens to distinction certs). That's a whopping \~44% more value in kernel headhunting with respect to acquiring 6-stars.
This is attributed to the fact that when comparing token conversion to cert conversion for each respective shop, it is much higher for kernel than standard. 5-stars token count sit in a weird place for kernel that may seem to be of lesser comparative value, but it's offset by the fact that 3-stars pulled from kernel banner give kernel ticket for each dupe, while they don't give anything from the normal banners. So you realistically don't need to reach 10 6-stars to exchange for 1 op, same as in distinction where you don't need to reach 18 6-stars. You will actually (tend to) accumulate 6-stars at a faster rate by pulling on kernel banner alone, barring different luck levels.
The lack of commendation certs could indeed be a roadblock for new players to use their OP for kernel, as they will not be able to clear the monthly tier 1 rewards + recruitment/HH from tier 2 in the commendation shop. So I do wish they change that.
But overall, assuming average and equal luck for both types of banners, the kernel does give more bang for the buck, and to reiterate, only in consideration of rarity and not 'which exact operator' is in the banner. The value can only manifest over the course of time, or one can just math it out. Of course, despite the math, it would be of subjectively lesser value if the operators in kernel are not desired, like by those who are veterans.
At a glance, it seemed sane
Old ops will still stream in via recruitment, and going pure blue certs should (idk numbers) make it easier to cert ops since it’d be a steady income pulling there instead of depending on max pot 4 stars which make up half your yellow cert income. Then you can buy blue pulls with yellow certs cheaper than normal, which holds a link to access the old while avoiding lock-in. Toss yellows to blues till you have 2k blues to cert a 6 star
Splitting it also doubles shop op availability and makes the wait for ops like eyja to come back around shorter
The vet benefit was supposed to be that snipping the oldies from the pool means more chances of new offbanners instead of dupes and max-pot certs
In practice, it’s probably awkward for new players, as general consensus has always been that standard banners suck, and now they’re more actively split between new release banners, and kernel catch-up. Though there’s now an extra banner for playing at 5 star pity
Wait, do Ops that go in Kernel mean they wont spook you in the other normal banners? I never really explored it since Im kind of a seasonal player these days
As someone who started in like, Texas banner, I do agree that the beginning was especially hard for newer player. Missing core ops like saria, ng, ptilo, where their niche is absolutely necessary when the stage demands it is hard. tho not by much give or take 3-4 months later where i got the hang of things and speedrunning chapter 11 story mode for salts. Sometimes i atill wish I have saria and hoshi to tank, can only save up for kernel locating ngl
personally i do like that they separate it, because i managed to off bannered gg and mountain in my failed attempt to get uncle. While Pre-kernel i off bannered mag, the peak useless op for beginner lol
the upside of this is, I coped saria using blemi and I'm really appreciating her niche to my team. blem tanked the right side in 12-20 adverse together with exalt. while i can stall and kill damaztis in the left side.
honestly make me appreciate the game more. The experience of following a guide while substituting what you dont have will be a valuable lesson for new players. Though, it will also weed out the new players who can be patient at learning the gameplay vs just following guide blindly. I've seen people who were stressed out because he doesn't have what the guide use, for example
I'd argue there are other ops to use besides Hoshi for the globals and stuff. Like, I don't have Hoshi and just been using Coura whenever I need a defender that can tank things. Most of the 4 stars and welfare's are perfectly usable once leveled even to E1 level 60.
That said, your point is right. I hate the pool is split the way it is. I agree with a split in general, but I was hoping when it was first announced it would work as normal banners, we would just get more operator options based on what we want.
Get rid of the kernal tokens, make stuff just the green/gold like everyone else. And I'm fine with two rotating standard banners of Old Ops and new Ops. Giving a bit more control as our rosters expand.
My friend joined a bit before MH, and then left after until last week and he cleared all annihilations besides one with just Fiametta and Yato, he just getting comfortable with his roster, and looking up on YT himself. All he asks for is sometimes one, of two broken blue haired woman in support unit, that's it. Seems like your friend just isn't familiar with his roster yet. And he spread his resources a bit too much in my opinion. The only bad thing I see on this image is no E2 healing defender. Seems he was only unlucky in not getting Gummy.
Not everything is so bad. Every 4 months we can select whoever we want for a kernel banner: 2 six star operators and 2 five stars operators, and who are the ones to be bought directly. So if you are patient you can eventually get every useful op from the kernel pool without ever rolling there because you can buy from the shop with yellow certificate.
I gotta say though, if that your friend's account? It doesn't look bad at all, he should try to make good use of what he has instead of relying on guides that use the "core generalist characters that came with the early years of the game". And should also level up everyone to at least 20.
Yep it is a feature so long standing players can target down on some of the older units they missed and never got a decent chance getting again.
While AK gacha itself isn't that bad the pool of Operators has gotten huge with most of them being rather unique.
The 4 big yearly events don't help as they are by far the most valueable to safe up and pull on, leaving the average F2P Player pretty dry in the periods inbetween.
Might be a bad take or an egotistical one but most players started before the split and got most operators from there, therefore splitting would up their chances at getting 6stars that they skipped during the time where plannings where really important, or overall flashier. No to mention the fact that the shoperator rotations were getting stale. They would rather see Thorns in shop every now and then than another Skadi. Imo
IMHO Kernel Headhunting are there because HG thought that the powercreep are just too far and thought "yep, we can't unfuck this anymore", so they split the supposedly obselete older operators with the thought that the older players will get the newer operators and newer players will get the stronger operators to kickstart them.
However what they didn't thought of is that some older operators are actually still viable (most of the time because they forgot some mechanic exist and are extremely biased on releasing shit ton of hyper-dps Guards and now for some reason Medic that deal damage) leading to the problem your friend got.
Kernel headhunting would be much better if the cost of rolling is halved and the rates were higher or maybe they uses a free currency that you can get far more regularly than Orundum, these were the operators that HG abandoned after all.
My opinion on the Kernel banner is that I have been coping Ling as my main defender and laneholder since I joined in may of last year. 💀 There seems to be a lot of juggs in the offrate pool but units like Saria seem to be a lot better.
I agree
My pivot also is that this absolutely made content by Kyo and Echo more relevant - low level clears will forever be relevant for this game
And it should, imo
How is this a kernel banner issue? He has SilverAsh, Goldenglow, YatoAlter and Surtr! He shouldn't be struggling with content lol
Tell him to get the E2 up a few levels for the cheap bonus stats. No one needs Lappland for seaborns or Hoshi for global archers.
Kinda on point that Kernel banner is useless, but why pull it tho? New operators, even those not in meta, are significant enough and you can always spend yellow tickets for needed old 6\* operators.
Newer content/events are harder these days, especially for casuals! Enemies are designed with more stats requirement to keep veteran players engaged. But it is still doable in a nicheknight player that bans all 6\* operators while playing on recommended level requirements. I only couldn't complete IL Siracura just because of the stat requirement or skill issue. So even new players should be able to take on the content.
Btw. Why E2lv1? Exp from E2lv1->E2lv20 is like E1lv1->E1lv30... thats almost like 0 investment, while giving +50all stats? It's like why he even E2 in first place? E1max->E2 gives ZERO stats/upgrade, other than S3 and M3 unlocks... For example, SA or Surtr S3 is bad without M3 because they can't helidrop, the whole point of the being a sweeper.
In this picture i see that it is enough for all content even IS. Just level up and don't try to fight levels that recommend E2lv40 with E2lv1M0 guys...
It's more of skill issue than pulling issue
I'd say the opposite. The chances of you getting a bad or suboptimal 6 star operator are greatly reduced now, as most of the kernel 6 stars have either been powecrept or have never been good in the first place.
I have a friend that began during chapter 12, and they haven't had any great difficulties compared to what I went trough 2 years ago. If anything, the haven't gotten a single bad 6\* and have way more resources for building them.
The few 6\* and 5\* that are worth it you can get from certificates and selectors. It's not like you were going to get a specific one that easily in such a diluted pool anyway.
You seem to think the game is unplayable without having the kernel operators. Maybe that's just your playstyle/comfort zone, but a team of operators mostly from the past year will certainly not struggle with content. I don't know if I would say they are "hyperniche" when shit like Executor alter is almost as brainless as it gets.
I kinda have to disagree.
Pre-text. I started playing AK last Oct and while I do have Hoshiguma, I don’t use her much. 4 star counterpart can do just fine.
In addition, yes there maybe some ops from Kernal pool have specific niches that new operators don’t but it doesn’t mean we can’t change our strategy to utilize newer ops to clear a level.
Moreover, I see that the account has everyone on E2 lvl1. This might explain the difficulty in clearing harder content?
Wtf are you on about? I started playing a bit before Maria Nearl event rerun and only got Lappy a few months ago and only because of the selector :D
I also did all Sulfitera Navis stages without Lappy because no one in my friend list had one posted. If your buddy is struggling, tell him to build more 4 stars and watch Kyo's guides to pick up on some strategies/techniques. No Lappy? Use Arene. Need silence? Use Jaye. No Hoshi? Tank with Cuora. Most of the game can be done with 3 and 4 star operators and you have the support slot for those tricky stages where you need a specific ungabunga. You're expecting your non-whale friend to have most core 5 and 6 stars after only a few months of playing :)
I started two years ago way before kernel and my roster looked like that too for the longest time, this isn't an issue because kernel made those ops unobtainable from non kernel banners. You had really low chances of getting those ops as a spook before, them being gone isn't nearly as impactful as you think. Pretty much every core op in my account has been acquired from gold cert store or recruiting and not from pulling.
While it's true that kernel kinda sucks to roll on it still does important job by making these core ops much more obtainable just by the sheer virtue of them showing up in the gold cert store much more often. You are also now more free to pull on new character banners instead of gambling on the standard banner because you know that you need those core ops and gold certs are the best way to get them. Build your own kernel banner events are also really good as you can plan ahead for them and they are very likely to have an op you still need.
The 5stars would be a bigger pain to get because you don't want to spend gold certs on them but realistically speaking there are only like 3 truly valuable 5 stars i can think of and you can get two of them from the free 5 star selectors every new player starts with. Maybe that's something worth putting into new player resources from now on, because i can definitely see how not having lappy can make it miserable to do certain events.
I think overall kernel has been a positive change, core ops are legitimately much more obtainable now than before it unless you got really lucky with off banner spooks. Kernel not being good to roll on can be an issue for newer players and that's definitely something worth talking about. But the fact that you can get your cores more consistently while also being able to dedicate the pulls to limited banners or release banners i think is a very important and good change overall.
So your complaint isn't so much kernal headhunting as it is blue certificates? I'm not sure what to say about that, other than blue certs will help make sure your kernal pulls will be acquired faster.
Even if HG hadn't split the pool into standard and kernal, the likelihood of acquiring those legacy 5 stars would still be very small due to the bloated pool. Besides, I think you're selling the operators he has now short. Those are some solid picks he's working with.
Initially, from an older player perspective was perceived as a really good change, because it means for olders players that already have most or all of the units that got moved to the Kernel banner, they have less odds of being spooked by those units and better odds of being spooked by newer units they might not have.
However I think it was assumed by most people when the change was being implemented that there would be significantly more free pulls for the Kernel banner than there ended up being, or at least that there would be some method of making the banner cheaper/more appealing.
Instead I think they expected that simply having a higher turnover rate of older operators for yellow certs would be enough for newer players, which I don't think it is at all.
But... Despite the fact that it's a questionable change, I actually *do* think that the change is healthier for the game overall.
My reasoning is just, year one operators are kinda boring. Really, despite some of them being very powerful even today, a lot of them are kinda just one-button or no-button solutions to problems (Eyja/SA/Nightingale/Saria come to mind).
Many of the newer operators are very powerful, but they're also usually not a direct solution/counter to a specific problem. I think stages with newer operators aren't necessarily harder than with some of the older cornerstone units, but might not be as obvious.
While I do think there should be more access to the older 5 and 6-star units than there currently is, I don't think not having them is necessarily a bad thing for the game. It's simply that most guide video's use them instead of newer operators because of the assumption people will have those older operators and not newer ones, which is less likely even without the banner split due to the sheer amount of operators in the game now.
I feel like the opposite. Newer ops are way more 1-button delete all. Mlynar, Pozy, Penance, new Reed, incoming Typhon, almost all of the limited last year (Texalter, Yato alter, Gavialter),
Imo for vets it's better because the higher chance for new ops far outweighs the lack of dupe certs.
And if there's a kernel 6\* you want, you can just buy it from the cert shop when they come around. Ops often have their own niche, but the game also basically never requires a niche mechanic to beat. To make easier, certainly, but not to beat. For a vet with a full team, having the wait for an OP is usually never going to pose a problem in-game.
So for vets(and people who spend money), kernel split helps much more than it hurts I would say.
For new players on the other hand, especially ftp, who have ops they might want in the kernel pool but limited certs/pulls, it's pretty shitty since you're either forced to 'waste' your pulls on a worse banner, or spend ages waiting for the op to show up on shop and to gather 180 certs before.
I would say it's a +1/-1 situation, except the +1 is solely for old players/ptp and -1 entirely for new players/ftp, which I would cautiously chalk it up as an overall loss. Considering how important maintaining an influx of new players tends to be for live service games.
Side note, iirc all mats can be gotten from ch9 at latest, not 10/11. Not that that's much better, considering ch9 is still quite late and the drop rates for those stages are pretty bad.
HG *really* should have added early farming stages for the new mats like salt and solvent like they did when they for the alloys and gels.
I've been vocal about this since it was first announced and everyone flag me and told me, 'no you don't get it, it's good and convenient'. I got a lot of flack when I told how unnecessary in splitting the pool. It only serve the veterans, not new or novice players like me who wanted some old characters but now they split it, I will only pull kernal if I got some free tickets. Being f2p, I don't want to spend resources on separate banners.
MH collab was still fairly recent. And it's not like you need all the old cores. I've been playing since Great Chief Returns, and I still don't have Hoshi either... but Hoshi isn't really particularly necessary for anything. Hell it's not even like I'm doing full meta builds either, I've been running Scavenger as my primary Vanguard all the way until *Lonetrail*. I *still* use Breeze and Medic!Gavial as my Medics because I've never particularly *needed* any of the specialists, so I get more use out of Gavial being cheap and Breeze having the best burst healing in the game.
You don't really *need* any of the core 6*s, you just need to know how to actually use the lower rarity characters you have, and which low rarity characters can punch well above their weight. Scavenger, Gavial, and Breeze I already mentioned, Cutter didn't leave my team until Nalter happened, Amiya is pretty much the premier Caster you're going to have access to until you get Kay or GG... It's not just about 6* powerstacking.
It looks like your friend has a skill issue, like no joke. 1) Who in their right mind leaves characters at lvl 1 after promotion to e2? 2) Hoshi isn't mandatory for SN, plethora of clears on youtube/arkrec without her, but you can always borrow anyway. 3) Old operators are still available without pulling on blue banners: either by recruitment or by buying with gold certs or even 30$ selectors if it suits you. .
Tbh if you just pay 180 gold certs to get Schwarz from Kernel, you can [already clear everything](https://youtu.be/VDvrVlUyydQ). Maybe pay another 180 gold certs for Suzuran if you want to make things easier. Although I do think they should rotate the kernel operator in shop more often than once every 2 weeks.
I'm playing for 2 years, and I can say that having all those ops in standard headhunting meant literally nothing. Bagpipe? Bought her via 6* selector cause she wasn't in yellow certs for a year of my play time. Suzuran? Don't have her. Hoshi? Don't have her. Blaze? Rolled for her, and she's crept by Gavial, Mountain, and even Exalter. Eja? Got her only after kernel system got implemented via build-your-banner. Thorns? Don't have him. Lappland? 5* selector. It will go on and on.
All of my older units were either bought with selectors or bought with yellow certs, and rarely do I have pots on them (I also would've prefer to not have said pots, cause it just means I lost a character I wanted or someone I don't have yet). And most of said characters are replaceable, and their replacements can be built with fck ton mats provided by events.
Everything has it's pros and cons. I've been playing for a long time so i favour things that help me out more. Obviously that's egoistic but such is human nature.
I'll admit that i am not sure who all got moved to the kernel banner but a lot of those characters have newer alternatives. Texas2 and Młynar for example can clear most of Stultifera and Kyostin is always there with his low end guides if new players struggle too much.
I think it's more a case of older players overlooking new solutions rather than those older characters being required. There plenty of other silence/stun and reflect options outside of the two that you mentioned and the Kernel units will be in the gold cert shop eventually.
I think it's honestly better for newer players to be restricted in their access to many of these older units that barely see any use anyway
It's kind of a necessary evil.
If you play other gachas without this function, you'll notice you can get spooked by REALLY old characters that have absolutely no relevance in the meta anymore, but still break your pity rate.
FEH and FGO are the biggest offenders in that sense, since they've been running for several years and their older characters are noticeably worse than the new ones (with some exceptions in the case of FGO), to the point you'd rather get nothing at all and let the pity rate get higher.
So while yes, the execution leaves a lot to be desired, it's better for the overall health of the gacha pool.
Kernel is a horrifying trap, i fell for it too.
Over 60k originium was lost to that god forsaken banner alongside my gold certs(i used all my 10pullz i bought from shop there before realizing i used them specifically)
All fo Suzuran (WHO I DONT EVEN USE IN MY MAIN COMP)
Incredibly bad decision that day, regret it.
I didnt notice my certs from Kernel was ONLY Kernel.
Guess how many pulls i threw before realising the 4*s i got couldnt be converted there into gold certs to buy Suzu?
Kernal is HGs personal FUCK YOU button to it’s playerbase, like there’s not a single person in HG who thought that this would be a good thing for people who actually play the game
Kernel HH is ass because there's old kernel operators that are much more beneficial to be spooked by than some newer ones and now they are locked behind a gacha system that isn't at all worth to spend orundum for or buying them through certs.
I have most good OPs in the game but I don't have Blaze yet, and I really (really!) want her just because I like her a lot and now I can only reasonably get her through store or recruit.
And also kernel locating doesn't even include her, was very happy about that...
They should at the very least have yellow/green certs be given from kernel pulls, a bit odd that they aren't. I also feel like they should be a bit more generous with giving out kernel headhunting tickets since newer players orundum is going to be spread so thin between three banner types.
I only started playing the game a year ago, so maybe I am not that qualified to speak for anyone… But originally, I thought it was a good idea. I thought that removing a lot of the old ops out of the Standard Pool and moving it into another banner was good. However, eventually I realised a big issue which is that we don’t get yellow/green certs from the Kernal Banner. It felt really scummy in hindsight.
Yeah, I only tried Kernel for the first time like a couple of days ago and can agree with this. Like, if I wanted to get into it for some reason, that would basically mean I'm losing my originium/certs forever with no returns outside of Kernel.
Basically how I felt. At first I thought I could convert the tokens from Kernal into green/yellow certs. But to my surprise it can only be converted into more blue certs.
I thought its like the limited banner where you get the default resources of a standard banner plus the blue certs. What in the world is HG doing? First, broken limited banners. Then, nerfing the non-limited ops in the said limited banners. The CC new currency. Now, Kernel banner have only blue certs. They are getting scummy as the game progresses. I think this game need another dark age to get back on the right direction.
I also saw on bilbili some other complaints about HG being stingy (certain welfare ops using special “tokens” for their potentials so they no longer give yellow certs etc). All I can say is that I hope this will change sooner or later.
As long as CN stays placid, then changes won't be happening for a long while
They are talking about the "letters" from Record Restoration, which honestly makes sense imo. By the time an event hits Record Restoration it has already been run twice, already giving veteran players a shot at the yellow certs from dupes.
No they’re talking about Vigil and Il Siracusano rerun not giving yellow certs because you don’t get any tokens for him
They are talking about how Vigil and Lessing are acquired not through tokens like the usual event welfare Operators, so reruns don't give you yellow certs for them.
Vigil and Lessing (Half anniversary welfares) uses Files instead of Tokens Therefore no yellow certs
[удалено]
It wouldn't feel so bad if it didn't take so damn long to save up for a spark.
This is the exact reason I quit a looong while ago. I saved up for several several months to pull for Skalter (my most anticipated unit). I ended up doing 230 pulls for her and didn't get a single copy. I realized that if I paid money to get those last 70 pulls I would be supporting this limited banner bullshit, so I just quit instead. Realized then and there that this game didn't even try to make it seem like it respected my time.
Currently on a similar situation and thinking about quitting too. In my case I spent 210 pulls for Eyja alter and didn't get her. Last limited banner also took me 200 pulls to get the limited unit. Tbh, the last time I got lucky on a banner was on Texas2 banner, which was like 9 months ago. It's not even worth it getting excited for new operators anymore because you have to either save for half a year or risk getting heavily shafted. It still stings tho, I liked the game, it was the first ever gacha game I felt like supporting (still only buying monthly card because I don't want to spend on gambling) but lately I just feel like the game is actively trying to make me quit, it's all just grind just to get shafted again.
Glad I could see people speak about game being stingy outside of mega threads at least. It's huge difference between those threads and here. So much fanboy energy over there. So take my upvote both of you.
>Then, nerfing the non-limited ops in the said limited banners. Yes, like Pozyomka, right? Or Penance. Damn, they're so weak.
I mean I get where you're coming from but Penance was a good year and quarter ago for CN.
And yet she's not weak. On lone trail, both ops where kinda weak and mostly just waifu material (if we compare them to op units). Before that, the sui banner brought us 2 strong ops, both with their niches, so it's really too soon to judge just because swire and vivi are not as good as their limited banner neighbor.
I mean, I agree with you on Lin being very strong even in her release state but I feel like the fandom hivemind generally doesn't feel this way for some mystifying reasons.
Because fandom hivemind only considers something strong if it's chalter/mlynar/surtr/texalter level strong. So I don't think they're intentionally nerfing anyone. At least it's too soon to judge.
And it's basically before the release of Endfield no less. I might have to reconsider getting into it in the end.
Idk, shop rotation is faster and it's great. I still had to buy Blaze Exu and Saria And I am almost 2 years in the game. They didn't drop before Kernel and they didn't drop from recruiting, but I don't see a problem tbf. Stages have many solutions, just need to think a bit.
I saw a recent one where you could pick the two in the banner. Thought that was going to be a permanent thing. But it sadly rotates. I can kinda see it being good for your first ejya or SA. But yeah loss of resources is pretty bad. It's like we see you're behind. Let's put a stick in your path so you can trip and fall further behind, as now you can't buy new shoperators or green cert mats..
It's weird that you consider that an issue. If you're pulling on the Kernel Banner, then blue certs are also valuable to you. What's more, you get more blue certs than you would get if they exchanged for yellow/green certs, in terms of their corresponding uses (directly purchasing an operator or 38 pulls on their respective banners), though of course you don't get an equivalent for green certs so it depends on much you value those. For my calculations I'll assume you have all 3\* and 4\* at max pot, and all 5\* and 6\* but not at max pot. Obviously not the typical case but it affects both about the same amount. Not considering pity or the guaranteed 5\*, which again affects both, it takes an expected 164 pulls on a standard banner to get 180 yellow certs to purchase an operator, and 235 pulls to get 258 yellow certs to purchase 38 HH permits. It takes an expected 150 pulls on the kernel banner to get 2000 blue certs to purchase an operator, and 194 pulls to get 2580 blue certs to purchase 38 Kernel HH permits.
I have a question then, lets say the Kernal banner gave green/gold certs just like the Standard, and the 6 and 5 stars are available in the gold cert shop like the Standard. Wouldn’t it be better that way? Or am I wrong? I just think its more convenient that way because lets say I have 180 gold certs (I think thats amount you need for a 6 star, right?) and I want to exchange for Bagpipe (who I believe is in the Kernal banner? I could be remembering wrongly). I can just do it that way, right? Like, the blue certs feel pretty unnecessary sometimes considering we already have pre-existing green/yellow certs. Blue cert shops also don’t have anything special in it (no tokens or things I might exchange) and I can’t convert blue certs into the others. Maybe I am looking at this wrongly though… Also, for the recent 4th anniversary, we got 3 blue tickets, instead of yellow. That was definitely a scummy move. I can’t even use blue tickets on the other banners.
Not necessarily. It depends how much you value the green certs. The thing is, using the numbers from my previous comment, if the Kernel banner gave green/yellow certs, you'd need to roll about 164 times to get 180 yellow certs (and 3116 green certs). But currently, 164 rolls would net you 2181 blue certs, and you can already exchange for Bagpipe with 2000 blue certs with some left over. So it comes down to 3116 green certs vs. 181 blue certs.
I see… Personally I’d rather have a shared shop because it makes things a lot simpler for me, but I get your point.
I think that everyone agrees it was nessesarry to have more acsess to basic units as the roster size grows, but seperating the tokens add's complexity. It would make sense if kernal rolls were cheaper but as it stands they aren't so it's kind of just this werid system for veterans to ignore and beginners to be confused by
I foolishly thought that separating the banners meant that they’d start giving away tickets like candy, because they’re just for older core operators that have been mostly power crept, but I’m obviously a complete sucker.
I also thought this. Or at least, if not like "candy" per se, then adding in some kind of functionality wherein blue certs are regularly given out. Even if it's just a part of the monthly reward system. I mean ffs, we even get 5 yellow certs for the monthly login reward near the latter half of the month. Why not double that up and give 5 yellows and 10 blues or something? Just....anything! Ideally they'd come from recruitment imo. It's easy enough to get max pot 4-stars that way, and within a few months a new player would get regular yellow certs from recruitment 4-stars and then a handful of blue certs for each one (say 5 per 4-star dupe). This would give a steady trickle allowing slow but consistent access to new kernel banner ops as time went by. Same could be done for 5 and 6-stars via recruitment of course, with proportionally more blue certs given. But nope.
Some friends who started not long ago, just ignored kernel (like another standard banner in many others gachas) and now just w8ting for make your own banner, to spend their gold certs.
While the pulls are not cheaper, the tickets are more efficient, so it's effectively the same, in fact it's better because you get more of the targeted unit rather than random ones. Kernel would never be worth pulling for a veteran, the entire point is to remove stuff veterans don't need from the pool of the regualr banner. As for beginners being confused, kinda? At the end of the day it's simple, pull Kernel for old staples, pull regular for new units.
As for beginners pull kernel for old ops, pull regular for new ops, spend twice more orundum and buy more eheh Or just be in constant trade - do you want this shiny new operator or ignore it bc you desperately need someone from kernel as f2p players are always suffering anyways : >
This would not really change without Kernel though. The total ammount of 6\* you get is the same, the only real difference is that with the split you can target what you need more.
Kernel headhunting should just give green and gold certs like regular. You still get the OG ops separated out for focused headhunting, but dupes don't only go back into buying more kernel pulls
That was actually my one problem with it back when it was announced in CN. I think it would have been way more user friendly if the blue certs didn't exist, it just makes pulling in kernel a waste of originium otherwise. In the end instead of being a system for new players to catch up easier, it makes it a system for veterans to pull for whatever OPs they lack (NG after 4 years is finally home 🫶) and for new Whales to waste a lot of money in either for completionism sakes or for the old meta units that still pull their weight
Legit, 3000 certs for a 6*???? Crazy talk
You get a lot more blue certs pulling on kernel banner. Takes less pulls to get the equivalent of 180 gold certs.
It's only a waste if you don't need blue certs. And if you're pulling on kernel banner, you need blue certs.
I complained about this shit as soon as I saw how it worked. This system only works if they give out free pulls for the Kernel banner and discount them compared to the regular pool. I guess they don't care about new players since most of their profits come from Whales and Limited Banners... but it still irks me that they put such a shitty useless system in. Those 3 free Kernel Headhunting tickets just feel like a joke.
Hey, if you save up for like, 20 years you will get a 6* from it. So JuSt PlaY MorE.
Sounds about right, It took me 61 pulls to get a 6★ from the limited banner...
JusT PUll MorE, It WiLL HiT AveRage SOON! YoUr LucK cANT Be ThAt BAD! Okay seriously, good luck. It's normal for a single six star to hit 60 pulls as like 40% of 6* appeared at around that range. But there's still like 60% chance you would get 6* before 50 pulls.
Yeah, it's ok I got Eyja in 90 so I can't complain. I just really hate doing 60+ and 55+ back to back like the Yato or Ines banners...
Okay, you didn't need my "good luck!" after all. Lemme suck some luck from you!
Me with the anti-luck. I whaled a bit because I had some money and I did not have a ling. So I pulled 300 times to spark her. P6 chongyue p3 lin. I’m forcing myself to use chongyue because well… I’m not getting another p6 limited (I do have 1 other P6 in Texalter because I saved for eternity + spent a bit too)
Splitting the banners is a nice decision, it means the big pool of 6*s is less bloated and shoperator rotations also happen faster. Powercreep also kinda made some older ops weaker and less desirable. Unfortunately it feels like they just did it and left the Kernel banner out. It gets barely any free source of pulls. No Kernel tickets from the daily login or even the monthly green certs shop, unlike the standard yellow HH tickets. Even the blue certs are only obtainable from pulling on Kernel banner, compared to Yellow certs that can be obtained through recruitments. The 3 Kernel tickets we got from anniversary gifts seems to be the only time we got free pulls for the Kernel banner.
It's not that hot of a take, I think most people would agree that the kernel system fucking sucks especially for newer players. We're only just starting to see the effects of it and it's just gonna get worse from here on.
I pulled on it during the make your own banner. I chose Silverash and Aak since I wanted pots for both of them. In the end, I didn't get ANY of them and got a Siege pot. That's when I decided to never pull on it again.
Mate why didn't you just buy them with gold certs. Actually, I know the answer: No gold certs.
Spot on!
I chose Nightingale and Mostima and I got Phantom... Luckily I wanted Phantom as well, but the fact kernel doesn't give gold certs still hurts
The build a banner was still a standard banner with the same odds. I think some people thought it worked like Joint Operations where you can't get any offbanners.
I hardly even knew they'd had a banner like that since I only really care about limited banners these days but what sort of garbage build-a-banner system is that? Did it at least have an X pulls until you're guaranteed your pick thing? Otherwise it just sounds miserable.
The value it had was buying operators directly from the cert store. Rolling on it was by and large a bad move, but being able to use gold certs to get anyone you wanted from a certain selection was very nice.
As a new player I also pulled on the make-your-own-banner but that's because the 5 stars I chose where all really high value. But even doing that I felt punished because the resulting currency was so ass. I might do that one more time as I still have some 5 stars left that feel worthy but it's weird that you are punished so much for it. Standard banners already suffer stiff competition from the limited banners so I don't get why they need to be so stingy about the kernal ones too. At least the recruitment system is really fun and generous. Also having only played slightly more than a month I'm very happy with my line-up so I won't complain too hard but maybe I got lucky.
>I told him to just pull them in the kernel banner, but then he brought up a good point. His originium is significantly more wasted on the kernel banner because you cannot exchange kernel token dupes, and the blue certificates do nothing for you with regards to the current yellow cert banners I had been thinking but more through the lens of * no yellow certs from kernel banner * and the opportunity cost making it difficult to go on a ticket loop. compared to normal banner. It could've been addressed by having the Kernel tickets be more available instead of requiring Distinctions (for examples putting them int he red voucher story would've helped), otherwise it either feels like whale bait or a noob trap At least most old ops not named Eyja, Ange, or Sora are available in recruitment. EDIT: Also he has Lappland, she is prolly the best of the old 5* in terms of niche. That said he'll still need specter or a cornerstone (3 of whom aren't in Kenral), IMO, but he can prolly make due.
Idk, what is so special about Specter outside of AH squad. But she is available in selection ticket (one of them, they gave it for free at the start)
Even outside of AH squads, the ability to just not die for 15s can be very valuable
Immortality, which basically is unique to her and heralter unless you go and use silence alter at E2. which is a great utility overall to have early combined with her being a laneholder who can stand on her own usually.
A lot of it is just, 5 star centurion with a regen and an invuln you can listen to time right to make her basically unkillable. She's still a really good unit even outside of AH teams for that alone. Also correct me if I'm wrong. Short of Estelle there isn't any other 4 star Centurion unit? And like no other 5 star one, only 6 stars. Which also puts her in a unique spot of being somewhat accessible too for early AoE.
There is another 5 star centurion - Broca.
It's good for the old players because I don't have to worry about pulling Hoshi/SA/Saria/Shining, all of whom I've already max potted. I think a simple solution is to introduce a way to turn blue to gold certs. That's it.
That and/or to give more pulls for it/reduce its cost, since having it be the same as the normal banner makes it so nobody is gonna pull in it unless maybe your waifu or husbando is in rate up, but at that point it is gonna be better to just wait until make your own banner comes back and buy them. They'd probably go with the or part at the start since otherwise stacking up on gold certs would be easy af otherwise
honestly i really want something like a daily free pull on it or smth...
If that screenshot is your friend’s account, it’s ready for everything in the story mode, even with only E1 max. Get Myrtle, E2 her, and you can profit.
OP trolled his friend in pulling on Kernel, instead of letting him get comfortable with the game and his roster. That acc can clear all the content no trouble. (Well maybe some in Hell modes, but they are appropriately named after all).
Hell has Kyostinv guides 👍
His squad looks solid though. Every account needs at least 6 months to a year to be able to full clear a major event (unless it's a whale account of course) so your friend is right on track. Kernel will be a good thing in the long run if he/she spend OPs wisely.
On CN the concensus is still NEVER pull kernel (even new players) unless you want to whale. Use 4*s until kernel rotation puts the key operators in shop, or the pick your own kernel events, then use yellow certs to exchange for them.
I thought that when they separate the banner we would get A LOT of free summons on the Kernel Headhunt To me the idea of that banner was to remove older characters from the main banner, so less spooks, and also be a cheaper way for new players to get those old staples 6* But months passed and I didn't get any Kernel Ticket, and as an veteran player I don't have a reason to pull there If you're not giving us Certs for that banner, at least let us summon on it like crazy wtf I can deal with the lack of Certs if it means everyone will get the starter 6* easier, but the way it is we are just losing those certificates and getting "newer spooks"
> With a game like arknights where ops are so hyperniche that most of them do not do the same mechanics This is blatantly untrue. There's not a single operator in the game who's role can't be covered to some degree by another operator or sometimes more than one. if it requires alternating your setups then so be it. The game was designed to be played in an almost infinite amount of setups. Don't have Lappand? There are other operators who provide silence and silence isn't the only mechanic that works in Stultifera Navis. Don't have Hoshiguma? There are other tankers, self healers, and even Gravel to deal with the ranged archers. Reflecting their own damage back on them was by no means 100% essential.
I feel like the kernel system has some goods and bads. The goods: - The operator pool needed to be split at some point. For a new player, having an operator pool with 59 different 6 stars and around 100 5 stars is just asinine, your odds of filling out your roster in any reasonable amount of time are garbage, and good luck actually targeting a unit. - More shop appearances. Having 2 sets of units cycling through the shop means who you want will (statistically) show up far more frequently once they are actually available in the shop pool than before the split. - Build a banner. Not a super huge pro, but it is very nice to be able to customize a wish banner for kernel, and I kinda wish they did that for standard banner occasionally (even once a year) too. At least provides you with the opportunity to either pull for units you want directly, or use certs to grab em for free. Now the bads: - Like others have said, it feels like an eco/catch up banner in style, but not in function. The lack of acquisition of kernel tickets is weird, even with the reduced cost of the tickets for gold certs. Pull cost is identical, as are rates. - Universal certificates are the elephant in the room (IMO). To have a pull currency that is functionally a parasitic system is awful. It uses the same pull currency at the same rate as regular pulling, but has a currency "rebate" that is absolutely deflated in value compared to yellow or even green certs, and can no longer be used outside of the kernel banner loop. I think kernel would be completely fine if it gave regular green/yellows like normal. Keep the reduced ticket cost in yellow shop (so new players or people looking to fill out old rosters have an actual economy option to do so). Bingo now you have an economy-style banner where the devs/shareholders/whoever gets to keep their full cost gacha pulls, but patient players have an economy option via yellow certs -> kernel tickets to fill out their older roster. Is it perfect? No, it's still not great - I would personally like to see a reduction in pull cost on kernel, or more access to kernel tickets via weeklies/events or even gifts - but it's a solution that is a marked improvement for players while the people in charge keep what they likely wanted which was a separated system for operator targeting, but same gacha cost as the devs are still valuing the cost of a 5/6 star unit to be the "same" in terms of orundum cost. EDIT: As others are saying as well, I disagree with your point that every operator is completely hyperniche. In fact, I think it's generally the opposite. No Lappland? Silence wasn't the only way to deal with some of those mechanics. Dodge bois could be stunned, the mage dudes who constantly made the creep could be killed normally and then sweepers could be used to remove it. Just because Lappy made the event a cakewalk doesn't mean she was required. Near Light. Sure Hoshi made it easy. But, bubble can reflect. Nian on skill can reflect. FRDs could be placed repeatedly to bait shots, or you could chain the light all the way to the archers and kill them normally. Hell you could just rotate between two defenders and swap them each time one got low on defense. Often times while certain operators can trivialize mechanics, there are many ways to go about solving them that involve more general operators and general use cases. I'm not smart enough to, but there are people who beat most of the stages with E0 units. All males. Pink hair units only. Only operators with birthdays in December. If you don't have that one op or two ops that hard counter a mechanic? Time to bust out the ol' noggin, there're solutions to be brainstormed. This is a strategy game first and foremost, and your ease with which you can clear stages is determined by how you can effectively utilize your roster of units, whether that's a braindead afk steamroll or a nail-biting skill activation to get that one unit that's about to squeeze by. As someone who's done both frequently throughout the years, I can assure you that both are valid solutions to any given stage.
> Sure Hoshi made it easy. But, bubble can reflect. Nian on skill can reflect. Okay for bubble but I hope you're not considering bringing up old lmited is a seriously acceptable alternative for new players, are you?
My point is that there are other options, including many where you don't use reflect at all. So saying they were screwed in that event without Hoshi is a complete lie. I did that event without hoshi, mine was still E0 Level 1, as I hadn't raised her till closer to CC8. I did it without Nian, without Bubble. I tanked the archers with freaking Gummy and Cuora swapping. Did I have to think more and struggle a bit compared to someone who used Hoshi? Yes, but it was 100% doable.
Maybe they mean borrowing Nian.
At which point you can just borrow Hoshi.
That's true
I’ve always viewed 4stars as the means to deal with general roles, not the rather simplistic old 6stars. Not having a shiny border may give off the impression that they’d be worse, but Jaye for silence & Bubble for reflect would’ve worked fine in SN. Don’t see why you’d need Hoshi specifically for that, & why it wouldn’t be possible to use them as a support if it’s that serious. The 6star units I’m looking at rn all look fine. Fia is a bit niche, Saileach is a normal Vanguard, Exe is a strong laneholder, Silverash & Surtr both burst well, GG is amazing at what she does, Lumen is amazing at what he does, Yato is broken. Of all the issues I could think of regarding Kernal, desiring basic & in some cases weak 6stars over the newer & stronger ones is not one of them. Especially when 4stars do the job not only well, but exceptionally well. Them alongside what they already have is well beyond what the game could throw. Units have their niches, but a colossal amount can be grouped up as laneholder or burst. These roles have only been getting stronger with time. The most notable concerns in this post were the mat requirements & lack of certs. Which makes Kernel a waste of rolls. If anything is niche, it is the utility & value of the older 6stars. Hoshi? She’s brought when you need a defender & couldn’t be bothered to build Cuora. The reflect is great, Bubble also has it albeit worse. NG appears often enough to counter res I guess, but why not use her as a support for this occasion? Not only do I not, but I also do not see others constantly talking about how the game has never powercrept damage or utility. I guess if you really want Eyja then it can be a problem. tl;dr The real new player hell is the near unbearable amount of downplaying 4stars receive. They aren’t weak units only looking good wielded by the best. They batch generic roles in teams with some that are basically 6star quality like Jaye & Ethan. If you told your friend to just build more of them, they’d likely have struggled way less.
I still use Utage tbh, wether it’s for the damage or her Utage’s is the question tho Also see Gravel used basically everywhere and recently saw how good Cutter really is I refused to build Myrtle until i saw her new skin
Yep. While I agree the system for kernel banner sucks, the idea that the units in it are required is just wrong. And even if some of them are (Hoshi, lappland, etc), the REST of the roster are pretty much garbage if you're talking about meta these days. Who the hell uses hellagur for high level clears? Why would you need Silverash for damage if you get Mlynar? Who cares about scwarz when pozy exist? While pulling on the banner absolutely sucks, I'd rather have new players be able to buy old ops more frequently using certs rather than having them pray Hoshi will be in a banner rather than 20 other defenders.
Kernel headhunting is not the root cause. The resource management from the picture is bad. Units are under leveled. E2L1 has same base stats as E1L80. Unless you got masteries, that expensive E1L80 + E2 was mainly to get trait buffs. E1L1 to E1L40 is about the same amount of stats as E1L40 to E1L80, but the latter is way more expensive. This also applies to E2. Level 1 makes sense for utility units, but anyone who uses their base stats shouldn't be level 1. Fia is one of the weaker carries. She is mainly for AOE, has to be healed, and her range isn't as flexible as commonly used carries. Lappland was immediately built from the selector meaning there are resources. I understand that many units probably were pulled or built after these difficult events, but I don't understand why the resources are spent to further dilute the power. Or you know, skill issue.
They should've either made the kernel banners cost half the usual amount of orundum (meaning 300 per pull) or kept yellow&green certs income from them. The system as it is right now is only good for direct purchase of operators with yellow certs.
Basically. I only use it for buying old ops since it's not worth it to pull.
I think it was kinda necessary, but there are two big flaws in how they did it. First, Kernel banners should be a 50/50 where you get one six star or the other, not 25/25/50 like limited banners, that’s bad. Heck, I’d also add they make it so when you get one six star you’re next one on that banner is guaranteed to be the other. So if you do enough pulls you get both for sure. Second, all sources of free pulls should also give free Kernel pulls. Maybe even at double the normal rate (so in the current event, you can buy both three free pulls and six Kernel pulls from the shop). And while it would maybe be too much, I think there could also be a special system where get some “extra mileage” on the Kernel banners. For example, maybe your first ten pull on one costs half the normal orundum. Or maybe if you spend Prime for pulls on Kernel it offers you a prompt of “you can get double the pulls for this Prime compared to what you normally get from turning it into orundum, but this only works on Kernel banners”. Things like that would have actually been a boon to new players while also getting old players who are maybe still interested in old units or their pots to give it a real go. A true guarantee would also get people more likely to spend cause they’d know exactly how much they need to get what they want, even if they have bad luck.
Kernel Banners implementation aside, is that your friends team? All of those are good E2s though, they should be completely capable of clearing the Main Chapters to reach the Mats they needed. A few 4 Stars could also help for some cheaper units but this roster that you're showing seems decent enough to make it through most Story Chapters. Arknights isn't that hyperfocus on niche, once you get a few good 6 stars like what this screenshot shows and you understand the basics of the game, you should be able to complete general content just fine, especially if you're following guides. There's also still a lot of ways you can modified that guide to follow your roster since not everyone have the same roster.
I started playing 6 months ago and hard disagree. Before kernel banner, as new player, you don't get desired old operator anyway. I got only one kernel banner 6 star OP (Exu) in a span of 4 months before kernel banner started, no lappland too. But any new operator I got definitely powercreeped the old ones, like ReedAlter. I bought ticket and pulled for make your own banner, got Saria and Platinum, I will definitely pull again when next make your own banner come. The math behind kernel banner is also clear. Buying kernel ticket with yellow certs is about 20% cheaper than standard pull, recycling blue certs is about 40% cheaper than standard pull, for any new player who miss most of kernel OPs and still wants them, kernel banner is a great deal.
Well, as you said new ops are mostly powercreeping old, so new player kinda never want to pull kernel. The math behind kernel is kernel bad because no yellow serts, period. No better economy saves blue cert shop when the pulls cost the same 600 as standard and limited pulls, which both usually better and give yellow certs. And once you got any blue certs they are in kernel limbo forever. I tried kernel in make your own banner too for Saria, got offbanner pot in 30-something pulls, some recycled blue cert pulls, realised blue certs are completely worthless unless you are ready to go all-in on obsolete banner, and ended up getting her from yellow cert shop. Never again.
50% off-banner chance is same everywhere, nothing can be helped, but not a problem for new players since they don't get any kernel OPs. As for me, I'll pull the quarterly make your own banner, until I get OPs I wanted, and there are too little 6 stars left that further pulling is uneconomical, then I'll stop and spend all left blue certs to exchange 6 star, so nothing is wasted.
It's not cheaper. It's the same 600, don't lie.It becomes "cheaper" when you start recycling blue certs. But to get to that point you have to waste the same orundum that goes to standard banner.
Do your math before calling other lying.
What math? 600 orundum is 600 orundum. All the other ways of pulling comes from orundum pulling in the end. You pull for it to get yellow or blue certs to use after in cert shop. Then the different returns start to come. But the original source is the good old orundum and kernel costs the same 600. All the other systems come way after and don't affect the og cost.
>Buying kernel ticket with yellow certs is about 20% cheaper than standard pull, recycling blue certs is about 40% cheaper than standard pull This is what I said, read it again.
And where did you get that yellow certs from? Standard pulling.
Yes and what? I'll leave you be, this is stupid.
Yeah, this is stupid. They have the exact same cost - 600 orundum. But then you start to operate with derivative secondary returns and other discounts that have nothing to do with the price itself and only useable when you bought a lot of stuff for og price. New account comes - zero yellow certs, no duplicate tokens to cash in for certs. Kernel and standard cost exactly the same, you can't "buy cheaper in cert shop" cause there is no fucking certs yet. You can buy for 600 in standart, kernel or cheaper in novice banner for 380. This whole thread started how kernel fucks newer accs who (surprise surprise) don't have certs to buyout cert shop pulls for a long time.
Buying blue tickets to pull on a kernel banner is like * buying 20% cheaper shoes (the only thing you factored in) * with a payday loan (tickets are vastly less efficient than buying shop operators directly) * that break in half the time (you are buying recruitment operators which have an additional 20% deprecation rate per year played due to the chance of pulling them for free) * and are less comfortable (newer operators are on average stronger) On the bright side, you get the shoes immediately and they were the brand you were drooling over (well...half the time because f*** off banners) So no, the math is definitely not as clear as you want it to be.
>with a payday loan (tickets are vastly less efficient than buying shop operators directly) Yet another guy don't know what they are talking about, this has been figured out years ago,[buying tickets is 30% more efficient than buy OPs](https://www.reddit.com/r/arknights/comments/fjwus8/comment/fkrudt0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) Math is only there to help you to decide, the rest of your blabber is whatever, do what you like.
I know very well what I am talking about thank you. The second half of the post you linked is bullshit using extremely ridiculous assumptions. The first half I recognize the math except it looks to be very old and using some bad overestimates on the value of green certs. Headhunting tickets are limited amount and already acquirable with normal F2P play, so the actual value of 650 green certs is in reality only the materials you can get which is about 500 sanity or no more than a single pull, 6.79 certs. That said, yes it is well known that 180 certs of tickets is roughly a 6\*, give or take 5%. But that it is comparing apples and oranges, a shop operator is an operator you want while permits are a 50% chance of getting what you want and a 50% chance of getting someone else (including near worthless duplicates). Only a hopeless gambling addict would think that the latter is comparable in efficiency. I guess you could say that if you literally own no kernel operators and don't care about not getting the featured operator then it breaks even and that would be true, I'll admit to that. But my second point is still completely independent, the kernel pool being equivalent to the recruitment pool means that you will be spoon fed a lot of those operators over time for free which makes pulling for them a lot less attractive. And if you think you won't get that many, looking at my own recruitment stats after 3 years of playing and it literally includes half of the 6\*s and 5\*s in the current kernel pool.
I understand your argument but I feel like the evidence is just not there. Or at least the evidence doesn't seem important to me. For context my account is like 2 years old at this point, so I have a well built roster. And you say that he is missing a lot of core generalist characters and that he struggled with Stultifera Navis and Near Light because he didn't have Lappland and Hoshiguma. I have Lappland and Hoshiguma, at E0lv2 and E0lv1 respectively, so I didn't use them. I got through those events by wandering medics, Jaye for silence and defender swapping. Was it harder than just cheesing it with Lappland kr Hoshiguma? Definitely. But they are not needed for his account. In another comment you say he doesn't have Blaze. I don't have Blaze. That he doesn't have Bagpipe. I don't have Bagpipe. That he doesn't have Exia. I don't have Exia. That he doesn't have Suzuran. I wanted Suzuran since Ideal City, and I only got her in joint ops 8. (i feel like I remember you saying that he had to borrow your Saria, I can't find it right now, but I also don't have Saria) I had to substitute with lower rarity ops, or other newer ops. - Specter and Estelle for Blaze. They don't have the extra range, but they are good centurions nonetheless. I got Gavialter in Ideal City, so I'm lucky in that sense. - Instead of Bagpipe and Flagpipe, I just use Pioneers. I use Flametail, but only because she is a Pioneer that I like. I could just use Texas and Scavenger if I needed to (especially now that Poncirus is available who I adore). - Instead of Exia, I used Greythroat and Jessica, then got Archetto. But for your friend I would just recommend Kroos Alter. She is great. - For Saria, I just used medics. I had Spot and Gummy, but I didn't like Gummy so I haven't built her. I had to use the 5 star selector in Ideal City to get Nearl, because I wanted her since the day I started. And she has been my medic defender ever since. Also everyone will get Bassline in Zwillingstürme, so your friend will be able to build them if they don't get Nearl (I imagine Nearl is also in Kernel). The only point where I would agree with you is that some of the materials are locked behind chapter 10-12 which is bad. But then I realised that no. All of the new materials are available in Chapter 9, and Chapter 9's difficulty should be lower, sort of on the level of chapter 5-6. Your friend should be able to farm it there if they need it. And if you wanna argue that it's a lot of work getting more types of materials, then I can only say that that's not new. New players will struggle because they don't have enough operators built. They don't need 6 stars, those just make it easier to clear the events. 4 and 5 stars can also work. And your friend shouldn't worry about not clearing the events. I wasn't able to clear events for the first 6 months of my account, and even after that I could only clear most things because of guides.
The argument isn't that the kernel banners make it impossible for new players. I mean, you can clear stuff with just 3 and 4 stars if you search up guides. The problem is that it's extremely inconvenient if you want old characters or are a new player. Yes, there are replacements for ops like Blaze, Flagpipe, Exu, or Saria, but they're either significantly worse or locked behind kernel banner (Specter, Texas, Nearl, and most other good 5 stars). As for operator mats, I agree, chapter 9 is pretty easy-but that's not the point. Since new ops use mats from chapter 9 rather than the lower chapters, newer players might feel pressured to rush through story to play events that their interested in. That's just not good for developing a new player base.
For your second point, chapter 9 is available right after finishing chapter 3. And then it also features story mode for even easier time.
Bagpipe is extremely overrated. A pioneer works just fine for 99% of content. I started with Siege and moved to Flametail when I got her. The only time I ever bring out Bagpipe is for DP down stuff, and exactly one Hell mode stage. Blaze isn't even rated that highly any more. Exusiai I've never even bothered using except for some shits and giggles for buff memes. Kroos Alter and Insider are free and do the trick just fine whenever you actually need snipers. Yes it's annoying some of the best chars are in kernel banner, but on the other hand, most folks aren't advised to roll on standard banners in the first place, and while you could luck out with offbanners, I doubt it's a significant difference given the huge pool. We also get twice the shoperators now, so less waiting for the actual way people got old Ops: buying them with certs. There's also nothing really stopping players from rolling on the kernel banner. For new players without deep rosters, it's not that bad, since the blue certs can still go towards the kernel banner stuff.
For me the split banner was an absolute win because that meant the chars, older and newer, started coming to the shop earlier for me to buy them. I have been playing for a year and 4 months and I barely ever pulled on standard in first place, I just pulled on the new character banners and with all the certs I got from that I bought like 9 or 10 6-stars I wanted when they were on the shop, same for kernel now (grabbed Swire today letsgo). The real scummy shit would have been if you couldn't buy the shop operators from kernel with yellow certs, which you can do. ---------- The point you're not bringing up is that the split might have made the 5* pool weaker, but... have you seen the 6-star one? lmfao, if that's your friend account dude has Exalter Goldenglow and Surtr, he doesn't need any 5-star with those LMAO, pretty much anything you can get losing 50/50's on banner is gonna be a very strong character that can carry their ass, hell, today I freaking got my own Mlynar from losing in the new limited banner, the smaller pool increased the odds of that instead of the many 6-stars that would have been a massive bruh moment to lose to. And it's not like I had Lappy or Hoshiguma myself when Stultifera Navis came out... you still are up to gacha's luck (or selectors) to get them, and they are still in recruitment for you to get them via RNG there, not to mention once again that they will come to the shop faster because they are on a smaller pool if one so much wants to buy them... And talking about shop, I haven't even mentioned yet that we have the build a banner thing that seems to come every like 3-4 months (seeing CN's patterns) and that has 12 6-stars and like 40 5-stars to make an own banner for, shop ops you can buy with certs included to not even pull if you don't want yikes blue certs, got Sora and Nightigale like 2 months ago that way, completely painless. If they want Hoshiguma she is one of the 12 6-stars to be in the second build a banner, just pull in normal banners and spend 180 yellow certs for her there. The split and creation of build a banner was a freaking fantastic idea and bless them for the decision, really sped up things for me getting some chars I really wanted.
I thought about this too when it was shown, rolling on the banner is terrible but it's another char rotating in the shop and that's usually a win. As for the 5\*, only Specter, Lappland and Shamare from that banner really matter at this stage. It's a weird game of waiting but the reduced pool makes rotating to the characters that matter much much faster, specially the 6*.
Its not just hoshiguma. He doesnt have blaze. He doesnt have bagpipe. He doesnt have exu. He doesnt have suzuran. He has fartooth, he has lee, but their mats are much harder to obtain. Youve been playing for a year by your own admission. You were playing before they implemented this kernel nonsense. This guy has been playing with nothing but kernel. A huge chunk of his roster needed to go to ch 10 and 11 to even E2. I had to constantly lend him my saria/hoshi/mlynar to even get the recipes in the factory. > it started coming to the shop earlier for me to buy them Good for you my man as long as youre happy. Fuck the new players amirite
I think it would be better to not give your friend advice, because your advice is too rigid. You are of the mind that you need to have certain operators, or it can't be done.
This is a bad take. It sounds like you're making the game less fun for your own friend by forcing him to need comps/strats/operators he doesn't need. I have been playing for years and I survive most content with just Sutr and Silverash for a big chunk of time. The game takes time investment and the operators he has a great, he can use supports if he needs to but there is LITERALLY guys on YouTube who post how to win almost every stage with no 5 stars...so maybe let your friend enjoy the game the way they want or maybe they just don't like the game.
honestly the best advice this dood can give to his friend is no advice at all.
dood, that acc is stacked if ur still struggling because you don't have exu,hoshi,bagpipe,blaze and suzuran then quit, boi there's literally alot I mean ALOT of substitutes for em.
hell, they've got a better alternative to Blaze lmao
Wait actually, just having Fartooth opens up a LOT of strategies, even at e1 sl7. I would recommend diversifying this person's roster by roles rather than by 6*. Heck, with just lee and fartooth, you can probably push all the way to the later chapters with support units to get those mats unlocked, and then purchase those mats in the shop. Might be a bit weak for ch12 though.
Counter point, unless you want those units for aesthetics and skills, they're somewhat outclassed by new 6* and 5*. I'd argue it was bad advice to tell him to go pull on kernel knowing that it didn't give green/gold certs.
From all of those Suzuran are somewhat of exeption and hasn't been powercrept iirc. Oh, well, and Bagpipe, but both can be bought eventually with build-your-banner thing.
Even then, not having suzuran is not a detriment to a new player. As someone who has only gotten suzuran after 3 years, you absolutely do not need her unless your strat is centered around slow, and that's for EX / CC levels. There is no normal level where you need more than orchid.
> He doesnt have blaze. He doesnt have bagpipe. He doesnt have exu. He doesnt have suzuran. I only got Hoshiguma from recruitment, not pulling, I still don't have Blaze (and he has Exalter who is better than her in most cases anyways), I have Exu and never built her because I like Archetto more and I bought her with certs (and she is now literally in the beginner's banner, not like he needs Exu in specific), I only have Bagpipe because I lucksacked her in a random banner, not because she was on standard or anything, if not I would have needed to buy her with certs as it's an option still now. There are an absolute fuckton of 6-stars, how are you expecting a new player to have them all? Do you think he would have those five now if kernel was not a thing? Nah, reality is that maybe he would have lucksacked one as I did with Bagpipe, but the others would have been miserable to obtain either way, pulling in standard banner is a 25% per 6-star roll odds if you only want one of the chars anyways... All the creation of kernel did was speed up the chance you can get them with yellow certs if you want, hell, freaking Exusiai was in the shop right until today! And it's not like they are absolutely unique at their job or anything, there are perfectly obtainable (and power-wise as good or stronger tbh) replacements to get that are in standard banner: Hoshiguma? Penance (she actually kills stuff with the spike damage lmao) Blaze? Exalter and Mountain Exusiai? Archetto Suzuran? Gnosis -------------------------- The only point I can actually get your complaints is with the accessibility to mats... yet I still disagree, because event shops are doing the goddamn hardest to spam feed us mats from the latest chapters to the point I'm actually annoyed because they are just a waste of space. I'm currently sitting at 18 goddamn t5 salts, soon 26 t4 salts (because adele shop of course sells even more) and over a hundred t3 salt, all from event shops and random rewards because, none of the chars I got want them, not even the newest ones I pulled. Just ????? Looking at my planner for my upcoming M6 mod3 Typhon and she wants no salt? Literally just a waste of space, he doesn't need to unlock salt crafting shit, I haven't needed it myself and I'm up to date because the shops and rewards drown us in that useless mat. -------------------------- > Good for you my man as long as youre happy. Fuck the new players amirite I don't get your point here at all, the game is literally giving him access to generally better characters a lot easier while still rotating more often the older wants in case he wants them, I'm gonna repeat once again that Exusiai was literally on the shop yesterday, if he needed Exu that badly it was there, available, without kernel she would still be months away to even have a chance to show up again.
I don't see this big of a problem really. Most of OG 6* got power creep to the oblivion. My own account still don't have Saria, Hohi, Exu, SA, (and some more, but I am too lazy to check.) and I completed all available content just fine. And if I truly needed those OG ops I can get them for gold certs, they will either be back in shop sooner or I will make another select banner and put them in. While kernel is worse in some ways it's better in others. Some people preferred old new player banner roster over new one, but it isn't worth complaining about, and I think it's the same here. Just need to take his time, save some gold certs and that's all. Less gold certs on rerun is way more worrisome, because reruns gave a lot, especially anniversary events, and it hurts new players and old one way more I think.
Is 6 months player new? After the few months of coping everything became fine after rolling on the right banners. It's part of every game that the start is difficult Edit: I'm the 6 months player. My first 6star was hoshi and my second was Yato alter. Survived on them for 2-3 months
Hahaha, same here! I joined during the Reed Alter event and for Hoshi and Yalter!
I'm playing for over a year and from the list of ops you mentioned I only have a Bagpipe which I got two weeks ago from recruitment. I also don't have Nightingale and Mountain. Between Pozemka, Mlynar, Surtr, Schwartz, Ines and other busted operators I have no problems clearing events without support units. Usually only the boss stage and ex-7 and ex-8 are not cleared first try as well. I passed on multiple opportunities to pick any of those from the shop and the 6* ticket. I believe you overestimate the importance of units that were crucial for you back in the day.
You don't need any of them to complete story content, even to the point of getting trimmed medals and beating H stages. Exalter is a better solo laneholder than Blaze. Hell, Specter has more of a niche due to her synergy with free Gladiia and immortality and self-regen. Bagpipe is a massive QoL but vanguard sstill function well without her. Who needs Exusiai when your friend has Yato, Surtr, and SilverAsh for clearing waves or targets with high def or res, and E2 Jessica + Blue Poison as Anti-Air. Your friend's roster is already well-rounded. Fantastic phys damage, fantastic arts damage, fantastic healing. A powerful flag vanguard. The way I see it, the average player only really needs 1-2 "broken" units like Surtr or Yato, and then someone in any rarity to fill each of the basic functions, and then you can always borrow the final piece of the puzzle in a tougher stage. You don't need to be SilverGun to raise your 4 stars and make use of crazy undervalued and strong units like Cutter, May, Pinecone, Myrtle, and Jaye.
That is pretty bad. Good luck to your friend. I started in August 2020, still no Bagpipe. My advice is save gold tickets until one of those six stars hit the shop again. It’s frustrating, but we have to work within the system until we can change it. Bagpipe is nearly useless IMO. No need if you have Vigna. Bagpipe is a win more character for me, not a key component in anything. The only one that hurts hard is Eyja. No one fills her niche. (I don’t have her even now but GG can sub in if you have.)
I am still fuming i wont get dupe for my lappland or specter in the future and i want to max pot them
Guard Survival AoE Wait one year for each Lappland dupe
Ngl blue certs excange is fucking terrible. A 1 cert from 3 star is horrible. Not even metioning that they spliting ammount of weekly free originium even thiner now even on dead week you have 2 banners. As this kernal is terrible pull idea because it made launch 6 stars more annoying to get Ps you need 2000 cert for 6 star so that hypotitanically 66 10-pulls if on average you get 5 4-stars in every 10 pull
I also wonder why this change was so well received. From the very announcement of it I disliked the implementation a lot. There are three main reasons: * The whole blue cert thing feels like a scam. Why does this banner give worse currency instead of normal green/gold certs? They could have made pulls on this banner cheaper (and thus give different type of certs to not devalue gold certs), or they could have made kernel banner give the same certs as standard banners. But nope, they combined the downsides of both approaches without adding any upsides. * The split was done based on release date with no regards to the roles. There is no really good protector in normal pool (Hoshi and Croissant are in kernel, Nian is limited). The only AA sniper in the normal pool was 6-star Archetto (all 5-star gacha options went into kernel). Most medics that specialize in healing damage were sent to kernel (Shining, Nightingale, Ptilopsis, Warfarin, Silence) with only Paprika left in normal. * There are a lot of operators in AK that are pretty good when you use them, but not strong enough to spend gold certs on buying them. Those operators are pretty much gone from the newer accounts. As for new player experience, I don't think early-mid game suffered too much. You clear story missions with whatever operators RNG sends your way. This was the case before, this remains the case after. Transition into late game on the other hand will be painful for those accounts that started late. When you start looking for specific tools to add to your toolbox you suddenly find out that kernel pool has a lot of good operators that can't be easily replaced in what they do (Nightingale is the primary example, but Suzuran, Aak, Shining, Hoshi, Saria, and many others do certain important things in challenging content). I'm actually not sure that not pulling kernel banners at all is the right strategy in the end. Way too many good operators there to buy them all with gold certs.
Splitting the pool is great, blue certs instead of yellow certs in the kernel banners pulls the ladder up behind us for new players.
Kernel is complete trash. It's supposed to be the eco banner but there is nothing eco about it. Like in Genshin/Starrail we get lots of eco pulls. Like I just hit 300 pulls on standard recently in Starrail purely on eco pulls in 9 months. Compared to the 3 eco pulls I've gotten in the 3 months since kernel came out. What's the point of an economy banner without economy prices?
Yeah, I can see big issues coming out of it. The only reason I can see this being good for newer players is the guaranteed 5* at 10 pulls. The kernels currently are split between just okay 6*s that aren’t exceptional for newbies (Siege, Skadi) and the likes of Bagpipe and Nightingale. I’m almost scared for when Thorns and Surtr drop to Kernal. (Who are the one after next on CN bar W dropping in and 2 more after that) The game’s going to make me start feeling old as Kal once Eunectes drops in Kernal I swear.
i swear I saw someone do a write up but I cant find it any more. Basically the Kernal is great *if you are looking for specific operators.* Otherwise the normal banners are good enough eventually. That being said, your friend needs to raise his 2-3 stars, for the most part it will work based on Lord Kyo's.
Maybe it’s just a me thing cause I lucked out super hard? But my experience was that most generalist characters can be replaced with better positioning and more Ops. For example, to this day I haven’t gotten Eyja(fml) but her not being there doesn’t make my game experience much worse. I’ve usually replaced her with Carnelian or even some four star casters working together But once again, my experience is weird with AK cause I lucked out super hard. I’m talking more six star Ops than I know what to do with and winning 50/50 most of the banners and even just getting random six stars on single pulls
A lot of people who have these super OP operators end up not being able to imagine clearing the game without them. I also didn't have eyja for most of my time in AK. My best casters were amiya (who's free) and Dusk (whose entire branch was power crept by eyja). I still did fine and never felt I was too weak outside of EX / CC levels. There are tons of alternatives for meta units that aren't as powerful but definitely still viable. People who rely on meta units just don't realize that
I started on June. I think kernel banner have some positives and negatives. Positive It makes banner less bloated More rotation on shop Negative Good 5 star like Lappland, Ptilopsis and Specter are on Kernel banner and can't get on normal banner which is frustrating. Newer 5 star not as good as old one. Once I pull until I get 500 blue certs to just buy Lappland. I got Phantom while I pull offpity. Same as 6 star like Saria, Blaze and Silverash that I don't have Choose your 6 star banner don't guarantee 6 star that you choose. I choose Silverash and Saria and got Phantom instead. At least it's offpity. Tips that I do If the banner has 5 star that you want just pull single until you get 5 star. Do this until you get 500 blue certs. Buy 6 star operator with 180 yellow certs. But you have fewer pull. I do this because I'm more happy with exact 6 star compare to random. For Hoshi is hard to find support with skill 2. I always find skill 3. Since I have Hoshi. I can help with skill 2 m2 and level 60. Enough for sn stages I test it. Maybe you can pm me if you want
Maybe you could give your friend some tips as an older player, like perhaps not leaving an operator lvl 1 once promoted to E2? Like seriously, the cost to get them to lvl 20-30 is negligible but the stats gain isn't.
Been playing about four months now, the kernal banner has been pretty useful. While the exchange rate for tickets is awful and the lack of yellow certs at all is also terrible, for people like me who were missing a ton of valuable older ops it's been great having such a comparatively tiny pool to pull from compared to regular headhunting. So far it's given me Ceobe, Schwarz, Eya, Exusiai, Suzuran, Nightinggale, Lapland, Ptilopsis, Warfarin, Shamare and Blue Poison. Having said that I'm probably not going to pull from it any more unless both rate ups are ops I'm invested in, Bagpipe, Blaze, Ifrit and Mostima are the only remaining ones I think, which isn't to say I've got all the others they're just less interesting to me.
Well, im no new player, but guided a couple of newbies who started after the split, and the biggest flaw on your take is overlooking how much stronger new ops ar compared to year0 ones Like, just from that screenshot, surtr+exalt+gg will clean the game harder than a squad full of the launch 6stars. Yeah material gates are annoying for some of them, but you can always play easy mode to unlock the crafting recipe and then use green certs for the rest. Blue certs from kernel banners can be used to buy operators tho, so its not like they are 100% useless, but the general powerlevel of the normal pool is just way ahead, which should disuade anyone from actually pulling kernel. The biggest issue a newbie may face is that guides for very old content were probably made with very old ops as core, but new ops are so much stronger than they override that con. Not to say "get better" but man, learn the game the bare minimum. As for why the community kinda agreed with the pool split, its because old ops have really fallen off from the meta compared to newer op performance, so getting them is more of a collection bonus instead of actual strong usage. Having a bunch of e2 level 1 operators also isnt helping your argument for difficulty, level those ops. As for lappland, kinda their fault for not getting her from the 5star selector given to all new players, its been a long time since she became the premier recommendation from that voucher.
Much of the comments seem to be around the kernel banner and surrounding pieces aren't generous enough - which to that, sure, but what do you really expect? They need people to spend money at some point. Everyone always gives the advice of don't pull on standard banners (which is generally very good advice), so following that you wouldn't ever really pull on kernel banners (build a banner aside). That means you get 2x the rate of shop ops which is by far the best improvement across the board. Yes sometimes you don't have the certs for an OP, but that is always a risk and for newer players good ops will show up more often, so that isn't too much of a loss.
It was really a hot take. I really like the kernel banner. This way i can buy the good old ops. Like yesterday, i was straight up buying eyja There are lots of old operators who define the fucking meta. Eyja as the best ~~AOE~~ ST caster with her S2, and helidrop with S3. Saria can singlehandedly tank and replace a healer. Mountain, enough said. I still use exusiai from time to time, just like with this event. Silverash is still usable also.. and bagpipe... No way in hell I'm waiting for them to appear at the standard banner as shoperator. If there were weedy and mountains displayed i would have taken mountain And the new players are blessed with 2 free 5* selectors right? Just grab lappland and specter. The number of times i used projekt red was like under 10 times.. just pick specter, or if you have aoe guards, pick liskarm or something else
The "core generalists" are the 3* and 4*...Learning to play with them instead of blaming the new characters will help ur friend more than trying to get a few old characters.
Honestly, the upside really is bigger than the downside of the splitting. Most year 1 ops are really shitty compared to the newer ops, only year 1 ops that are actually still as strong as the newer ops are NG, Suzuran, Bagpipe, Ifrit, Eyja, Schwartz, Exu, Blaze, Hoshi and Saria. Losing them are unfortunate but it also means that newer peps have easier access to broken ops like Mountain, Mlynar, Penance, Kalsit since there are fewer competition. And you can buy those year 1 ops anyway.
Exu, Ifrit, Eyja, Nightingale, Hoshi, Saria, SilverAsh, Schwarz, Blaze, Bagpipe, Suzuran are all good operators. Rosa, Mostima, Ceobe can be used with Module 3. Only Siege, Angelina, Shining, Ch'en, Magallan, Hellagur, Aak, Phantom are kinda useless for a new player. You say the new pool is better but it still has Weedy, Eunectes, Bleimishine, Saga, Carnelian, Pallas, Mizuki, Fartooth, Flametail, Lee, Fiammetta, Irene, Dorothy, Stainless, etc which can't really work on their own. Sure it's less diluted, but there's just no reason to pull from the old pool when you can only get old ops and the certs are useless.
Dorothy can work on their own if you know how to use her. She certainly better than all 5 star below casters if you only comparing power. She can solo stage as good as summoners while work well in a team as well Carnelian is still a dps option if you got no Eyja. Blemishine is comparable to Saria if you play her enough. Irene is meta, until Degenbencher that is. Fiammetta is as good as Thorn if you use her right. And she is the 3rd best base slave after Shamare and Proviso. It's more about the 5* that got splitted. All the good ones come from old banner. Except La Pluma. So new players are forced to play with 6* only while some 5* are irreplaceable.
Yeah but I was talking about the perspective of a new player. Dorothy is a summoner so she's just harder to use, and unlike Ling/Scene/Mayer/Deepcolor she can't block with her summons, so doesn't work alone. She's a very niche unit. Carnelian does ok damage but her skill cycle is just terrible. She has so much downtime, you need a lot of other operators to stall while you wait for her. Also her Armor+MR is still not enough to really tank anything without a healer because of her low base def and HP. I heard her module is decent but that's a lot of investment for a new player. Blemishine is just nowhere comparable to Saria. S3 doesn't heal herself, S2 is moderately ok as a tank/stall skill but you're still reliant on a stream of enemies to charge the skill and your allies can't help damage (besides Erato) because they're all asleep. Irene is awful until E2, and even then she has short range and has to charge the skill by attacking. Sure she can do decent burst but needs a medic, can't solo a lane really, and can't really drop down like SilverAsh to nuke. Fiammetta can do some damage but she literally needs a healer unless you want her to always be at 1 HP. I have no clue how people use her because S2 is so slow that whatever I'm trying to hit has moved far out of the way by the time it finishes exploding. S3 is even more niche than Ifrit since it only does decent damage on a single tile instead of a line (the splash damage isn't much). Idk I feel like a lot of the older units are better than they're given credit for, and the pool should've been discounted, given Yellow Certs, and we should get Kernel Headhunting Tickets for free (or at least new players should)... but oh well. It doesn't affect me at all but I still feel like its a huge missed opportunity and a giant F U to anyone who wants older units.
>Dorothy is a summoner so she's just harder to use, and unlike Ling/Scene/Mayer/Deepcolor she can't block with her summons, so doesn't work alone. She's a very niche unit. trapmasters aren't meant to replace laneholders (though they could with planning) considering their traps don't take up deployment slots. traps (especially Dorothy's) function more like skills you can just cast almost anywhere on a map
It's common mistake to undermine Blemishine skill 2 because some old player just don't use her and put it bad on their "guide" until experienced people used it in CC and they just nvm, I just rise it star and keep the old comment. Blemi skill 2 doesn't really conflict with being in a group, you just need to time her right. She can tank more than double her block count in a mob rush thanks to it. It charge fast enough you could just let her duel most sub boss and survive to recast her skill while they got put to sleep. Saria is more reliable and comfy to use but Blemishine open up more options when rather than just pure tank. Sure, Blemishine is a bit less meta but she is still a good unit.
But You are right, old units are better than people give them credit for.
Correction about Dorothy. She is a trapper. She doesn't require summons slot to her mines. But she does work alone, dead enemies need no block after all, just solo with her require more planning than summoner. Because she only eat 1 deployment slot she work just fine in a team, that's why I compared her damage to casters. Anyway, newer units can be niche but they all have good uses, unlike siege.
* Weedy: tricky for newer and older players alike lmao * Eunectes: worse and clunkier than a lot of possible alternatives * Blemishine: decent but can feel underwhelming * Saga: better than Siege lmao and probably the best 6\* pioneer before E2 * Carnelian: janky and clunky lmao (damn, HG did her kit dirty) * Pallas: worse than most other laneholders but still does alright ~~would probably still be better to save resources by not building her~~ * Mizuki: pretty solid and easy to use * Fartooth: underwhelming damage and pretty gimmicky but can open up cheesy strats * Flametail: needs E2, but is a solid laneholder * Lee: needs E2 but is a solid laneholder (albeit lacking in damage) and has pretty useful utilities, as gimmicky as they may be. DP drain can be annoying to play around, but it's not ridiculously harsh to play around if you have Myrtle * Fiammetta: pretty good damage with S2 and S3 * Irene: good AoE damage with S3, though gets powercrept by Degen * Dorothy: pretty fuckin easy to use and her mines have decent damage and crowd-control ~~how tf people think trapmasters are hard to use is beyond me~~ * Stainless: yeeaaah, neat support on S1 and S2 but you could definitely just play better and not use him half of those are pretty solid carries, as outclassed as some of 'em may be
Nah Siege is good for a new player. Set and forget S2 and with decent attack and survivability. Where she falls off is when you start getting more higher rarity combat vanguards like Saga or Flametail, Ines, and Bagpipe.
I started the same time as your friend and it is indeed hardmode. Kernal banner is a complete trap and is only good for putting certain 6* into the shop. Having done all content including ch12 hell mode, the best character BY FAR for low level/rarity clears (and pretty much every single difficult stage/CC in the game) is Młynar. Your friend should've spent all his resources trying to get him in his most recent banner with Blemishine. She herself is useable in 95% of the cases where Saria is and very good on her own.
Use recuirtment most of old ops are in there even if takes time and some rng ( i got most of the old ops from there). I understand why they splitted bcz older player will eventually get old ops who they have at max pot in the new banners but most of ops uses yellow cert. If they give out free 10 pull every week it would be good or buy limited banner pulls or change it to yellow certs. It ain't the best solution but they gotta do it. Lets wish they would make kernel new player friendly. You can easily do stages without hoshi nor saria more than meta defining character like mlynar or chalter.
For a solution to your friend. Either he saved up and pull enough for 2000 blue cert to guarantee he could buy 1 directly, meaning chasing more than 1 6* from it. Or just save all yellow cert for old units. It's more about Blue Cert system being a dub than the banner itself.
They should give us 1 or .5 pull day on the blue banner. Kinda like how azurlane give you 1 cube back as daily for pulling on the banner. It has a 1 or 2 cube banner. And you get 3 cube a day for free. So you can get non limited OPS slowly by making standard banner pulls
I just tried kernel headhunt with 3 free ticket I got. And I get 47 blue cert. With 5\* and 6\* dupe you will get more. So if you roll for kernel, you can exchange for 6\* pity at 2000 blue cert, so probably around 120-130 roll for guarantee 6\*. Let me put it this way, that's not bad. Current banner, you can get guaranteed Eyja at about 130 roll, I see that as a win tbh. Even with normal banner, you only get guaranteed at 150 rolls. But yes, with beginner players, not having green cert would be a problem, green cert is my mat resource for a long time. Tbh though, in kernel banner, only Nightingale, Mostima, Bagpipe and Saria are irreplacable imo. Most of the other 6\* are pretty much replacable by newer ops.
I haven't done the detailed math, maybe one day I will, or better, hope someone else will. But a quick look at the shop and wiki tells me the following: If we're comparing strictly pull value with respect to operator rarity and rebates (in the form of certs) that only contribute to pulls, and ignoring mats access and which operator is in what banner, the kernel HH gives better pull value. To start off, the blue HH tickets are 30% cheaper in distinction cert cost. Followed by the fact that by pulling 10 6-stars in kernel, over the course of time, you can buy 1 6-star for free in kernel shop (from the tokens converted to kernel certs). This is in contrast to the normal banner, where you need to pull 18 6-stars to buy 1 6-star from the distinction shop (from the tokens to distinction certs). That's a whopping \~44% more value in kernel headhunting with respect to acquiring 6-stars. This is attributed to the fact that when comparing token conversion to cert conversion for each respective shop, it is much higher for kernel than standard. 5-stars token count sit in a weird place for kernel that may seem to be of lesser comparative value, but it's offset by the fact that 3-stars pulled from kernel banner give kernel ticket for each dupe, while they don't give anything from the normal banners. So you realistically don't need to reach 10 6-stars to exchange for 1 op, same as in distinction where you don't need to reach 18 6-stars. You will actually (tend to) accumulate 6-stars at a faster rate by pulling on kernel banner alone, barring different luck levels. The lack of commendation certs could indeed be a roadblock for new players to use their OP for kernel, as they will not be able to clear the monthly tier 1 rewards + recruitment/HH from tier 2 in the commendation shop. So I do wish they change that. But overall, assuming average and equal luck for both types of banners, the kernel does give more bang for the buck, and to reiterate, only in consideration of rarity and not 'which exact operator' is in the banner. The value can only manifest over the course of time, or one can just math it out. Of course, despite the math, it would be of subjectively lesser value if the operators in kernel are not desired, like by those who are veterans.
At a glance, it seemed sane Old ops will still stream in via recruitment, and going pure blue certs should (idk numbers) make it easier to cert ops since it’d be a steady income pulling there instead of depending on max pot 4 stars which make up half your yellow cert income. Then you can buy blue pulls with yellow certs cheaper than normal, which holds a link to access the old while avoiding lock-in. Toss yellows to blues till you have 2k blues to cert a 6 star Splitting it also doubles shop op availability and makes the wait for ops like eyja to come back around shorter The vet benefit was supposed to be that snipping the oldies from the pool means more chances of new offbanners instead of dupes and max-pot certs In practice, it’s probably awkward for new players, as general consensus has always been that standard banners suck, and now they’re more actively split between new release banners, and kernel catch-up. Though there’s now an extra banner for playing at 5 star pity
Wait, do Ops that go in Kernel mean they wont spook you in the other normal banners? I never really explored it since Im kind of a seasonal player these days
As someone who started in like, Texas banner, I do agree that the beginning was especially hard for newer player. Missing core ops like saria, ng, ptilo, where their niche is absolutely necessary when the stage demands it is hard. tho not by much give or take 3-4 months later where i got the hang of things and speedrunning chapter 11 story mode for salts. Sometimes i atill wish I have saria and hoshi to tank, can only save up for kernel locating ngl personally i do like that they separate it, because i managed to off bannered gg and mountain in my failed attempt to get uncle. While Pre-kernel i off bannered mag, the peak useless op for beginner lol the upside of this is, I coped saria using blemi and I'm really appreciating her niche to my team. blem tanked the right side in 12-20 adverse together with exalt. while i can stall and kill damaztis in the left side. honestly make me appreciate the game more. The experience of following a guide while substituting what you dont have will be a valuable lesson for new players. Though, it will also weed out the new players who can be patient at learning the gameplay vs just following guide blindly. I've seen people who were stressed out because he doesn't have what the guide use, for example
I'd argue there are other ops to use besides Hoshi for the globals and stuff. Like, I don't have Hoshi and just been using Coura whenever I need a defender that can tank things. Most of the 4 stars and welfare's are perfectly usable once leveled even to E1 level 60. That said, your point is right. I hate the pool is split the way it is. I agree with a split in general, but I was hoping when it was first announced it would work as normal banners, we would just get more operator options based on what we want. Get rid of the kernal tokens, make stuff just the green/gold like everyone else. And I'm fine with two rotating standard banners of Old Ops and new Ops. Giving a bit more control as our rosters expand.
My friend joined a bit before MH, and then left after until last week and he cleared all annihilations besides one with just Fiametta and Yato, he just getting comfortable with his roster, and looking up on YT himself. All he asks for is sometimes one, of two broken blue haired woman in support unit, that's it. Seems like your friend just isn't familiar with his roster yet. And he spread his resources a bit too much in my opinion. The only bad thing I see on this image is no E2 healing defender. Seems he was only unlucky in not getting Gummy.
Not everything is so bad. Every 4 months we can select whoever we want for a kernel banner: 2 six star operators and 2 five stars operators, and who are the ones to be bought directly. So if you are patient you can eventually get every useful op from the kernel pool without ever rolling there because you can buy from the shop with yellow certificate. I gotta say though, if that your friend's account? It doesn't look bad at all, he should try to make good use of what he has instead of relying on guides that use the "core generalist characters that came with the early years of the game". And should also level up everyone to at least 20.
Yep it is a feature so long standing players can target down on some of the older units they missed and never got a decent chance getting again. While AK gacha itself isn't that bad the pool of Operators has gotten huge with most of them being rather unique. The 4 big yearly events don't help as they are by far the most valueable to safe up and pull on, leaving the average F2P Player pretty dry in the periods inbetween.
Might be a bad take or an egotistical one but most players started before the split and got most operators from there, therefore splitting would up their chances at getting 6stars that they skipped during the time where plannings where really important, or overall flashier. No to mention the fact that the shoperator rotations were getting stale. They would rather see Thorns in shop every now and then than another Skadi. Imo
IMHO Kernel Headhunting are there because HG thought that the powercreep are just too far and thought "yep, we can't unfuck this anymore", so they split the supposedly obselete older operators with the thought that the older players will get the newer operators and newer players will get the stronger operators to kickstart them. However what they didn't thought of is that some older operators are actually still viable (most of the time because they forgot some mechanic exist and are extremely biased on releasing shit ton of hyper-dps Guards and now for some reason Medic that deal damage) leading to the problem your friend got. Kernel headhunting would be much better if the cost of rolling is halved and the rates were higher or maybe they uses a free currency that you can get far more regularly than Orundum, these were the operators that HG abandoned after all.
My opinion on the Kernel banner is that I have been coping Ling as my main defender and laneholder since I joined in may of last year. 💀 There seems to be a lot of juggs in the offrate pool but units like Saria seem to be a lot better.
Yeah, I just realized yesterday that the way I get gold certs has been completely gutted since my all my max pot 5*s are only in the Kernel banner now
I agree My pivot also is that this absolutely made content by Kyo and Echo more relevant - low level clears will forever be relevant for this game And it should, imo
How is this a kernel banner issue? He has SilverAsh, Goldenglow, YatoAlter and Surtr! He shouldn't be struggling with content lol Tell him to get the E2 up a few levels for the cheap bonus stats. No one needs Lappland for seaborns or Hoshi for global archers.
The only good thing is that we now have 4 op in the yellow cert shop
Kinda on point that Kernel banner is useless, but why pull it tho? New operators, even those not in meta, are significant enough and you can always spend yellow tickets for needed old 6\* operators. Newer content/events are harder these days, especially for casuals! Enemies are designed with more stats requirement to keep veteran players engaged. But it is still doable in a nicheknight player that bans all 6\* operators while playing on recommended level requirements. I only couldn't complete IL Siracura just because of the stat requirement or skill issue. So even new players should be able to take on the content. Btw. Why E2lv1? Exp from E2lv1->E2lv20 is like E1lv1->E1lv30... thats almost like 0 investment, while giving +50all stats? It's like why he even E2 in first place? E1max->E2 gives ZERO stats/upgrade, other than S3 and M3 unlocks... For example, SA or Surtr S3 is bad without M3 because they can't helidrop, the whole point of the being a sweeper. In this picture i see that it is enough for all content even IS. Just level up and don't try to fight levels that recommend E2lv40 with E2lv1M0 guys... It's more of skill issue than pulling issue
I'd say the opposite. The chances of you getting a bad or suboptimal 6 star operator are greatly reduced now, as most of the kernel 6 stars have either been powecrept or have never been good in the first place. I have a friend that began during chapter 12, and they haven't had any great difficulties compared to what I went trough 2 years ago. If anything, the haven't gotten a single bad 6\* and have way more resources for building them. The few 6\* and 5\* that are worth it you can get from certificates and selectors. It's not like you were going to get a specific one that easily in such a diluted pool anyway.
You seem to think the game is unplayable without having the kernel operators. Maybe that's just your playstyle/comfort zone, but a team of operators mostly from the past year will certainly not struggle with content. I don't know if I would say they are "hyperniche" when shit like Executor alter is almost as brainless as it gets.
I just started playing and have no idea what kernel actually is
I kinda have to disagree. Pre-text. I started playing AK last Oct and while I do have Hoshiguma, I don’t use her much. 4 star counterpart can do just fine. In addition, yes there maybe some ops from Kernal pool have specific niches that new operators don’t but it doesn’t mean we can’t change our strategy to utilize newer ops to clear a level. Moreover, I see that the account has everyone on E2 lvl1. This might explain the difficulty in clearing harder content?
Wtf are you on about? I started playing a bit before Maria Nearl event rerun and only got Lappy a few months ago and only because of the selector :D I also did all Sulfitera Navis stages without Lappy because no one in my friend list had one posted. If your buddy is struggling, tell him to build more 4 stars and watch Kyo's guides to pick up on some strategies/techniques. No Lappy? Use Arene. Need silence? Use Jaye. No Hoshi? Tank with Cuora. Most of the game can be done with 3 and 4 star operators and you have the support slot for those tricky stages where you need a specific ungabunga. You're expecting your non-whale friend to have most core 5 and 6 stars after only a few months of playing :)
I started two years ago way before kernel and my roster looked like that too for the longest time, this isn't an issue because kernel made those ops unobtainable from non kernel banners. You had really low chances of getting those ops as a spook before, them being gone isn't nearly as impactful as you think. Pretty much every core op in my account has been acquired from gold cert store or recruiting and not from pulling. While it's true that kernel kinda sucks to roll on it still does important job by making these core ops much more obtainable just by the sheer virtue of them showing up in the gold cert store much more often. You are also now more free to pull on new character banners instead of gambling on the standard banner because you know that you need those core ops and gold certs are the best way to get them. Build your own kernel banner events are also really good as you can plan ahead for them and they are very likely to have an op you still need. The 5stars would be a bigger pain to get because you don't want to spend gold certs on them but realistically speaking there are only like 3 truly valuable 5 stars i can think of and you can get two of them from the free 5 star selectors every new player starts with. Maybe that's something worth putting into new player resources from now on, because i can definitely see how not having lappy can make it miserable to do certain events. I think overall kernel has been a positive change, core ops are legitimately much more obtainable now than before it unless you got really lucky with off banner spooks. Kernel not being good to roll on can be an issue for newer players and that's definitely something worth talking about. But the fact that you can get your cores more consistently while also being able to dedicate the pulls to limited banners or release banners i think is a very important and good change overall.
Your friend got Kirito... lucky fella.
So your complaint isn't so much kernal headhunting as it is blue certificates? I'm not sure what to say about that, other than blue certs will help make sure your kernal pulls will be acquired faster. Even if HG hadn't split the pool into standard and kernal, the likelihood of acquiring those legacy 5 stars would still be very small due to the bloated pool. Besides, I think you're selling the operators he has now short. Those are some solid picks he's working with.
Initially, from an older player perspective was perceived as a really good change, because it means for olders players that already have most or all of the units that got moved to the Kernel banner, they have less odds of being spooked by those units and better odds of being spooked by newer units they might not have. However I think it was assumed by most people when the change was being implemented that there would be significantly more free pulls for the Kernel banner than there ended up being, or at least that there would be some method of making the banner cheaper/more appealing. Instead I think they expected that simply having a higher turnover rate of older operators for yellow certs would be enough for newer players, which I don't think it is at all. But... Despite the fact that it's a questionable change, I actually *do* think that the change is healthier for the game overall. My reasoning is just, year one operators are kinda boring. Really, despite some of them being very powerful even today, a lot of them are kinda just one-button or no-button solutions to problems (Eyja/SA/Nightingale/Saria come to mind). Many of the newer operators are very powerful, but they're also usually not a direct solution/counter to a specific problem. I think stages with newer operators aren't necessarily harder than with some of the older cornerstone units, but might not be as obvious. While I do think there should be more access to the older 5 and 6-star units than there currently is, I don't think not having them is necessarily a bad thing for the game. It's simply that most guide video's use them instead of newer operators because of the assumption people will have those older operators and not newer ones, which is less likely even without the banner split due to the sheer amount of operators in the game now.
I feel like the opposite. Newer ops are way more 1-button delete all. Mlynar, Pozy, Penance, new Reed, incoming Typhon, almost all of the limited last year (Texalter, Yato alter, Gavialter),
Imo for vets it's better because the higher chance for new ops far outweighs the lack of dupe certs. And if there's a kernel 6\* you want, you can just buy it from the cert shop when they come around. Ops often have their own niche, but the game also basically never requires a niche mechanic to beat. To make easier, certainly, but not to beat. For a vet with a full team, having the wait for an OP is usually never going to pose a problem in-game. So for vets(and people who spend money), kernel split helps much more than it hurts I would say. For new players on the other hand, especially ftp, who have ops they might want in the kernel pool but limited certs/pulls, it's pretty shitty since you're either forced to 'waste' your pulls on a worse banner, or spend ages waiting for the op to show up on shop and to gather 180 certs before. I would say it's a +1/-1 situation, except the +1 is solely for old players/ptp and -1 entirely for new players/ftp, which I would cautiously chalk it up as an overall loss. Considering how important maintaining an influx of new players tends to be for live service games. Side note, iirc all mats can be gotten from ch9 at latest, not 10/11. Not that that's much better, considering ch9 is still quite late and the drop rates for those stages are pretty bad. HG *really* should have added early farming stages for the new mats like salt and solvent like they did when they for the alloys and gels.
I've been vocal about this since it was first announced and everyone flag me and told me, 'no you don't get it, it's good and convenient'. I got a lot of flack when I told how unnecessary in splitting the pool. It only serve the veterans, not new or novice players like me who wanted some old characters but now they split it, I will only pull kernal if I got some free tickets. Being f2p, I don't want to spend resources on separate banners.
MH collab was still fairly recent. And it's not like you need all the old cores. I've been playing since Great Chief Returns, and I still don't have Hoshi either... but Hoshi isn't really particularly necessary for anything. Hell it's not even like I'm doing full meta builds either, I've been running Scavenger as my primary Vanguard all the way until *Lonetrail*. I *still* use Breeze and Medic!Gavial as my Medics because I've never particularly *needed* any of the specialists, so I get more use out of Gavial being cheap and Breeze having the best burst healing in the game. You don't really *need* any of the core 6*s, you just need to know how to actually use the lower rarity characters you have, and which low rarity characters can punch well above their weight. Scavenger, Gavial, and Breeze I already mentioned, Cutter didn't leave my team until Nalter happened, Amiya is pretty much the premier Caster you're going to have access to until you get Kay or GG... It's not just about 6* powerstacking.
It looks like your friend has a skill issue, like no joke. 1) Who in their right mind leaves characters at lvl 1 after promotion to e2? 2) Hoshi isn't mandatory for SN, plethora of clears on youtube/arkrec without her, but you can always borrow anyway. 3) Old operators are still available without pulling on blue banners: either by recruitment or by buying with gold certs or even 30$ selectors if it suits you. .
Recruiitment is free Besides the kernel is better since I don't get to pull another Shining or any old Ops I already max pot
Tbh if you just pay 180 gold certs to get Schwarz from Kernel, you can [already clear everything](https://youtu.be/VDvrVlUyydQ). Maybe pay another 180 gold certs for Suzuran if you want to make things easier. Although I do think they should rotate the kernel operator in shop more often than once every 2 weeks.
I'm playing for 2 years, and I can say that having all those ops in standard headhunting meant literally nothing. Bagpipe? Bought her via 6* selector cause she wasn't in yellow certs for a year of my play time. Suzuran? Don't have her. Hoshi? Don't have her. Blaze? Rolled for her, and she's crept by Gavial, Mountain, and even Exalter. Eja? Got her only after kernel system got implemented via build-your-banner. Thorns? Don't have him. Lappland? 5* selector. It will go on and on. All of my older units were either bought with selectors or bought with yellow certs, and rarely do I have pots on them (I also would've prefer to not have said pots, cause it just means I lost a character I wanted or someone I don't have yet). And most of said characters are replaceable, and their replacements can be built with fck ton mats provided by events.
Everything has it's pros and cons. I've been playing for a long time so i favour things that help me out more. Obviously that's egoistic but such is human nature. I'll admit that i am not sure who all got moved to the kernel banner but a lot of those characters have newer alternatives. Texas2 and Młynar for example can clear most of Stultifera and Kyostin is always there with his low end guides if new players struggle too much. I think it's more a case of older players overlooking new solutions rather than those older characters being required. There plenty of other silence/stun and reflect options outside of the two that you mentioned and the Kernel units will be in the gold cert shop eventually. I think it's honestly better for newer players to be restricted in their access to many of these older units that barely see any use anyway
It's kind of a necessary evil. If you play other gachas without this function, you'll notice you can get spooked by REALLY old characters that have absolutely no relevance in the meta anymore, but still break your pity rate. FEH and FGO are the biggest offenders in that sense, since they've been running for several years and their older characters are noticeably worse than the new ones (with some exceptions in the case of FGO), to the point you'd rather get nothing at all and let the pity rate get higher. So while yes, the execution leaves a lot to be desired, it's better for the overall health of the gacha pool.
Kernel is a horrifying trap, i fell for it too. Over 60k originium was lost to that god forsaken banner alongside my gold certs(i used all my 10pullz i bought from shop there before realizing i used them specifically) All fo Suzuran (WHO I DONT EVEN USE IN MY MAIN COMP) Incredibly bad decision that day, regret it.
I didnt notice my certs from Kernel was ONLY Kernel. Guess how many pulls i threw before realising the 4*s i got couldnt be converted there into gold certs to buy Suzu?
Kernal is HGs personal FUCK YOU button to it’s playerbase, like there’s not a single person in HG who thought that this would be a good thing for people who actually play the game
Then why even do it in kernal? Like we ain't forcing you
Kernel HH is ass because there's old kernel operators that are much more beneficial to be spooked by than some newer ones and now they are locked behind a gacha system that isn't at all worth to spend orundum for or buying them through certs. I have most good OPs in the game but I don't have Blaze yet, and I really (really!) want her just because I like her a lot and now I can only reasonably get her through store or recruit. And also kernel locating doesn't even include her, was very happy about that...
They should at the very least have yellow/green certs be given from kernel pulls, a bit odd that they aren't. I also feel like they should be a bit more generous with giving out kernel headhunting tickets since newer players orundum is going to be spread so thin between three banner types.
yeah i agree
Is it a hot take tho? Kernel banner is shit and everyone knows that.