É il botrichio ramoso, una rarissima felce, la pianta ri-scoperta poca giorni fa in val di Rabbi e che si riteneva estinta in Trentino. A scovarla, il ricercatore Gianmaria Bonari insieme a Lucio Sottovia, ex direttore dell'Ufficio biodiversità della Provincia di Trento

L'avevano data per estinta in Trentino, invece si è fatta scovare in val di Rabbi dal ricercatore Gianmaria Bonari accanto all'ex direttore dell' Ufficio biodiversità della Provincia di Trento Lucio Sottovia. Si chiama botrichio ramoso ed è una piccola e rarissima felce: un unico esemplare, quello che si scopre oggi affondare le proprie radici nei terreni del Parco nazionale dello Stelvio.
Appartenente alla famiglia delle Ophioglossaceae, il botrichio ramoso è una specie (piccola e poco appariscente) a distribuzione artico-alpina che nel tempo non ha smesso d'essere minacciata dai cambiamenti nella gestione del territorio e dalle pratiche agricole, rischiando di scomparire anche da molti siti d'Europa (e che, fino a due anni fa, pareva svanita anche dal territorio trentino). La presenza di questa pianta è attualmente nota solamente in altre due località della Regione (oltre alla recente scoperta relativa alla val di Rabbi), di cui una scovata solamente due anni fa.
Questa pianta, non a caso, risulta elencata nell'Appendice I della Convenzione di Berna (sulla conservazione della vita selvatica e degli habitat in Europa) tra le specie floristiche particolarmente protette, rendendola un incontro assai prezioso e affascinante.
Così, preziosa e affascinante, è definibile anche la scoperta di qualche giorno fa nel Parco nazionale dello Stelvio da parte del ricercatore Bonari, che stava studiando la zona nell'ambito del progetto BIOmen finanziato dalla Libera Università di Bolzano, di cui è responsabile e che indaga gli effetti della conservazione nei parchi nazionali: "Il ritrovamento – racconta Bonari – sottolinea il ruolo strategico dei parchi nazionali per la tutela della biodiversità e l'importanza della conservazione in quest'epoca di rapide trasformazioni ambientali".
"Una ri-scoperta come quella di Botrychium matricariifolium è l’espressione concreta dell’impegno del Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio nella conservazione della natura e conferma il valore della ricerca condotta grazie alla collaborazione fra gli enti che vedono nella ricchezza di specie e biodiversità la chiave più importante per adattarsi al futuro", conclude.
https://www.ildolomiti.it/ambiente/2022/parco-dello-stelvio-scoperta-una-pianta-rarissima-ritenuta-estinta-in-trentino

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I only live 5 mins walk away from a local pizza place so I went in and ordered direct to take away. I didn’t call ahead as I didn’t see much point as I lived so close and I didn’t mind the extra couple of minutes.
While there I saw the were doing a special offer. 10% discount if you mentioned their promotion over the phone and then went in to collect take away.
“I know I haven’t called in first, but now I know you do a discount if you do, and to save us both the hassle of me calling you right now and for the fact I know the promotion exists, can I still get the 10% off anyway?”
“No. It’s for telephone orders only”
“Sure, I get that, but I could literally just call you right now from my mobile and you’d give me the discount but that’ll be a bit weird to make me do that, so can I just get it anyway?”
“No. It’s for telephone orders only”
This jobsworth attitude pissed me off, so I was literally about to just forget about buying anything from there and go somewhere else, but as I got outside I figured that no, I’d just stand outside and call the number on their door and order a pizza that way to get my discount.
The phone rang and the same guy picked it up:
“Can I order a pizza to collect with 10% discount please”
He recognises my voice obviously as it’s just been 15 seconds since we were speaking inside. He looks outside at me. I smile and wave. He looks pissed off that he has give me my discount now.
He takes my order and says it will be 10 mins.
During the next 10 mins while waiting for my discounted pizza, someone else is about to come in the restaurant to order a take out. I ask them if they have phoned ahead for the discount or not. They didn’t realise that’s was a thing. No problem buddy, I’ll do it for you. What do you want?
I call the same number again, same guy answers and hears my voice again and looks straight at me again.
I smile and wave again and proceed to order this random strangers pizza order for them whilst maintaining eye contact with him.
“My friend would also like the 10% telephone discount”.
He looks like he’s gonna pop a blood vessel but has no choice but to accept it. After all, I didn’t enforce the rules, he did.
A week later, the telephone order discount is cancelled completely and it’s simply given if you have a menu, and there are menus in the entrance anyway, so you’d be crazy not to see it and use it.
Edit: Well that blew up! Answering a few of the main questions here:
This happened a while ago, so the promotion wasn’t to do with google ads, or tracking info or storing numbers etc. It was just a badly executed promo that forced you to call to the very person stood in front of you already taking your order anyway if you wanted the discount.
No, not been waiting 15 years to tell this story like I’m some sort of legend and my life peaked at that moment, I read something else on Reddit yesterday and I was like “oh yeah, I remember something like that happening to me and I’ve never posted in MC before, so why not share?”
The guy behind the counter wasn’t a kid with management breathing down his neck. He may have even been the owner or manager for all I know. It was a small place and not a chain, and if it wasn’t just him there doing everything, then it was only him and the chef. So making me call him on the phone in front of him was him enforcing the stupid rule, I just complied with it.
I agree, I risked a spat on pizza. I don’t suggest pissing off people who make your food. It was not something I was thinking of at the time though.
I’ve also tweaked some text above for clarity as reasons why for not calling in first (lived super local and I’d only ever walked in, never called it before) and realise now that I didn’t know about the promo until there. That’s why I then asked about it. Thank you.

Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/51999
ow that we’re back from Shanksgiving, we’ve got a few more things we need to wrap up before the new year ahead. Not only are we talking about our latest adventure into unknown lands, this time channeling incredible characters from one of Ubisoft’s most iconic franchises, we’ve also got a sneak peek at even more weapon tuning ahead, a fresh look at some new gear, and the community weapon ornament voting has begun with a special sit-down with the artist herself to talk about the process coming later this week.
Just like the previous TWAB, here’s a quick rundown on what we’re going to be chatting about this week before diving right in:

More on the exciting new partnership with Ubisoft.
Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, and Nightfall Loot Pool updates.
Weapons philosophy and more on upcoming changes with Senior Design Lead Chris Proctor.
An important update on Hunter Void invisibility.
Season 19 artifact preview.
Time to vote for your favorite Arbalest ornament, as well as a bonus interview with the chosen community artist behind the craft that will drop later this week on Friday!
New Prime Gaming drops.
Known issues list update.

Let’s get into it.

We’ll Meet Again, Guardian, In An Altaïr-net Universe

In case you missed it, we’re getting our stealth on, Guardians! Earlier today, we shared our latest venture out into the great unknown once more, this time partnering up with one of Ubisoft’s most iconic franchises. To celebrate our latest crossover, we are challenging players to take a Leap of Faith and embrace the way of the Brotherhood with new cosmetic items that will let you live out your best mysterious-hooded-figure-looking-for-adventure fantasy. From recent heroes to classic favorites, it’s a phenomenal way to get the best of both worlds. Plus, more fashion. Who could say no to that?

Prepare to take a leap of faith, Guardians. In partnership with @Ubisoft, worlds are about to collide with brand new cosmetics.
📅 Dec. 6 pic.twitter.com/Os2bmPi4mJ
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) December 1, 2022

Even better? That “hidden order” love works both ways with Valhalla players enjoying some Destiny 2-themed gear themselves inspired by some of the greatest warriors fighting against the Darkness with new armor sets and unique weapons inspired by some of the most iconic weaponry in the world of Destiny. Oh! And a new mount, because you can’t fight crime if you ain’t cute.
After all, it technically is still stealth if nobody is left to rat you out to the Templars.
To learn more, make sure to check out the full blog post right here about what’s new!

A Fine Evening of Iron Banana and Trials of Osiris with a Splash of Nightfall

It’s a new Season on the horizon, which means more loot to earn. For those Guardians with a penchant for a different kind of challenge, there is a new array of weapons to earn. Whether you’re heading for the Lighthouse or just looking to make ‘ol Saladin proud before heading out to run Nightfalls, here’s what you can look forward to with the upcoming Season:

Trials of Osiris
- What’s arriving:
  - Exalted Truth Suros Adaptive Hand Cannon + Adept
  - Unwavering Duty Suros Adaptive Machine Gun + Adept
What’s staying:
- Whistler’s Whim Bow + Adept
- Forgiveness Sidearm + Adept
- The Inquisitor (Adept) Shotgun + Adept
- Burden of Guilt Fusion Rifle + Adept
What’s leaving:
- Aisha’s Embrace Scout Rifle
- Reed’s Regret Linear Fusion Rifle
Iron Banner
What’s arriving:
- Dark Decider Auto Rifle
- Gunnora’s Axe Slug Shotgun
What’s staying:
- Allied Demand Sidearm
- Roar of the Bear Rocket Launcher
- The Wizened Rebuke Fusion Rifle
- The Hero’s Burden Submachine Gun
- Frontier’s Cry Hand Cannon
- Razor’s Edge Sword
What’s leaving:
- Forge’s Pledge Pulse Rifle
- Riiskalker Shotgun
Nightfall
- What’s arriving:
  - Wendigo GL3 Heavy Grenade Launcher
  - Hung Jury SR4 Scout Rifle
- What's leaving:
  - Silicon Neuroma Sniper Rifle
  - Duty Bound Auto Rifle

One more thing! We also have shiny new Season 19 ornaments for ritual activities like Gambit, Crucible, and Vanguard strikes. Feast your eyes on more activity-themed fashion for the upcoming Season and marvel at our ability to always come in hot with that clutch green snakeskin look.

Weapon Philosophy and the Art of "Running Div"

With a new Season on the horizon, a fine weapons-tuning update is just what Banshee ordered. We’ve got Senior Design Lead Chris Proctor back to chat about even more tweaks to gunplay that Guardians should know about. From an accessibility standpoint (it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me), the Full Auto toggle that has been implemented is one of the changes we’re particularly excited for, but that’s just one small part of a bigger update. From weapon philosophy to global goals, here’s what Chris had to say about what’s next.

Chris: First up, if you haven't looked at a weapons TWAB since the Season 18 one, you may want to catch up on the Festival of the Lost mid-Season (6.2.5) Weapons Balance update, which can be found here, which has important info for what’s coming next. Additionally, several hotfixes landed over the course of the current Season, one of which included the following balance changes:

Reduced aim assist on Special ammo Linear Fusion Rifles.

Applied previous sniper flinch changes to Linear Fusion Rifles.

Global
We've seen very positive player responses to the Full Auto Retrofit weapon mod over the past several Seasons. Because of that, we have added a Full Auto toggle to the Gameplay section of the Settings menu that will be going live with the launch of Season 19. This setting will allow for all weapons to become fully automatic.
We'll be watching how players end up using this and are looking into additional ways for players to pick which types of weapons this setting applies to sometime after Lightfall. For now, we have this new toggle. On a related note, we're also aware that certain melees also require speedy clicking and are looking at something similar for a subset.

For example: Glaive, Sword, and roaming Super melees (though currently, not regularly charged and uncharged melees).

Weapon Archetypes
We pulled quite a few weapons archetype changes from Season 19 into the previously referenced 6.2.5 update, so this section is smaller than it would otherwise have been. That said, we have some substantial changes here, particularly to Shotguns and Glaives, so it’s worth diving into if weapon theory is your thing.
Shotgun
Shotguns were previously able to one-hit kill (OHK) from too far away and needed adjustment. Once that was addressed, the weaknesses of random pellet spread became clear: they've become less reliable, even at close ranges. This gave us a solid starting point to do something we have been looking into for a while: Giving each Shotgun subfamily a custom, fixed spread pattern, and a matching custom reticle. Each of these spread patterns is intended to give a subfamily a unique style of gameplay and predictable effectiveness at specific ranges.
The reticles are tuned to match the size of the actual spread pattern at the default field of view (FOV) but note that this is not the case as FOV changes, or as spread angle changes (like if you are jumping, for example). We'll update reticles to react dynamically to spread angle in Lightfall and FOV in a later release, though this first step was crucial for getting that prepped for implementation in the future.
The changes listed evolve the experience of using a Shotgun so much that we expect to revisit tuning on these over the next few Seasons. That’s OK. Tailoring to different playstyles while maintaining a balance takes time, but we’re on a good path. Also, note that we have held off on adjusting Fusion Rifles because the balance between Shotguns and Fusion Rifles depends a lot on how these changes work out after Season 19 launches. “The numbers, Mason, what do they mean?"
Here are the spread patterns for each Shotgun subfamily:
Aggressive: fixed, evenly distributed cone
Precision (includes Duality hip-fire): vertical oval
Lightweight: diamond
Rapid-Fire: square
Slug: updated reticle to properly show precision
Additional changes:

Aggressive

Fixed several Shotguns that were using the incorrect intrinsic Aggressive perk. All Aggressive Shotguns will now increase rate of fire after a kill, as intended.

Rapid-Fire:

Increased PvE damage by 5%.

The reload speed benefit for the Rapid-Fire Shotgun Frame now always applies instead of only when reloading from an empty magazine.

Sidearm
Sidearms are now much more viable in PvP since the 6.2.5 buff to this weapon type’s auto-aim falloff distance, but this caused a notable over-buff to Drang, allowing it to compete too far outside Sidearm range.

Reduced zoom stat on Drang and Drang (Baroque) from 14 to 13.

Fusion Rifle
Now onto Fusion Rifles. Main Ingredient is still wildly effective as a range-y Fusion Rifle due to being able to roll with stability perks in both columns. We've adjusted some of those perks, but we don't want to poke at them further if it isn't needed, so we're just hitting the (slightly out of band) stats of this weapon directly:

Reduced stability from 49 to 35.

Reduced aim assist stat from 59 to 45.

Fusion Rifle reticules don't react much to changing accuracy due to firing or jumping, even when on mouse and keyboard and at a high FOV.

Rebuilt the Fusion Rifle hip-fire reticle so that it reacts more obviously to changes in the accuracy cone.

Glaive
Glaive projectiles have not hit our quality bar for hit registration yet, so we have reworked them. We're also loosening the restrictions on some melee damage Exotics and have adjusted base melee damage and some PvE damage scalars to avoid degenerate damage multipliers.

Glaive projectiles have been adjusted for more reliable hit detection over the network.

Glaive melee attacks can now benefit from the Exotic armor perks on Synthoceps, Wormgod Caress, and Winter's Guile.

Glaive melee damage multipliers reduced by 25-30% against Champions, mini-bosses, bosses, and vehicles.

Damage against major and minor enemies is unchanged.

Glaive melee base damage reduced from 75 to 67.

Hand Cannon
When we updated stats for Hand Cannons that used to be Lightweights (now Adaptives), we didn't touch Rose. Now that Rose is returning, we’ve adjusted its stats for smoother re-integration.

Updated Rose's stats to work for an Adaptive Hand Cannon.

Increased range from 38 to 43.

Reduced stability from 45 to 40.

Reduced handling from 68 to 60.

Airborne effectiveness is 20.

Blinding Effects
Grenade Launchers, The Queenbreaker, and Grand Overture all previously used the older blinding screen effect, which players have reported could feel jarring and pose some photosensitivity concerns.

Switched these to the new Arc blind effect, which has significantly reduced screen effect brightness and is overall less intrusive.

Weapon Mods
Weapon mods that increase the effects of weapon perks do not make for interesting decisions, so we’ve made a long-awaited (and long-requested) change to them:

The Dragonfly, Rampage, and Surrounded perks now have their spec mod behaviors enabled by default.

Perks
Reworks
We're not happy with how the prior redesign of Air Assault turned out, so we've taken a second pass at it. It now directly rewards success and is much more dependable for players.

Air Assault now grants a stacking bonus to airborne effectiveness.

Maximum two stacks: one per final blow, two per airborne final, each stack is +30 AE.

Headseeker has been a boring and questionably useful perk on most Pulse Rifles for quite a while, so we've redesigned it, as well:

Body shots now increase your precision multiplier and increase aim assist. Additional body shots reset the timer.1

It has a 0.55s base timer. Body shots while Headseeker is active reset the timer.

Encore's initial implementation was a little complex and fiddly to use, so we've redesigned that one too:

Final blows now grant stacks of Encore and stacks grant increased stability, range, and accuracy.

Body shot final blows grant one stack, precision final blows grant two stacks, with a maximum of four stacks.

Lasts 7s, enhanced lasts 7.5s. Final blows refresh timer.

+8 stability, +5 range, and +1.25% accuracy per stack.

Seraph Rounds will be appearing on more weapons next Season, but in its current form, it's the strongest magazine perk by a large margin, so we've pulled it back a little and made it more of a tradeoff:

Removed +10% range scalar.

Now offers +7 stability, +3 range.

Tunnel Vision plus Kill Clip not being refreshable while active has always been counterintuitive, so we've now set them up to allow that. That being said, this makes Kill Clip too strong compared to other damage perks, so we've pulled it back a little:

The duration of these buffs can now be refreshed if activated while already active.

Reduced Kill Clip damage bonus from 33% to 25%.

Redirection didn't use our standard method of checking for weak versus strong enemies, so we've changed it to be consistent with other perks since it'll be appearing on more weapons.

Now builds stacks against red bar enemies and consumes them on everything else (i.e., matches minor spec and other perks that use similar language).

Buffs
We want players to be able to use the Hakke Breach Armaments origin trait to bring down Ward of Dawn, Well of Radiance, and Stasis crystals in PvP.

Now increases damage vs. Ward of Dawn and Well of Radiance sword by 30% (60% with the artifact mod).

Damage bonus against Stasis crystals has been increased by 15% (both base and with artifact mod).

Gutshot Straight shipped a little weak on Auto Rifles, so we've bumped it up a little:

Increased bonus Auto Rifle body shot damage 10% to 20%.

Compulsive Reloader's reload speed benefit is enjoyable, but on certain weapon types, it doesn't remain active deep enough into a magazine:

Now remains active down to half ammo.

The High-Impact Frame intrinsic perk can be hard to use since it switches off with little movement. We've tweaked this so that that slow movement (e.g., crouching and strafing) doesn't deactivate the perk.

Now allows a small amount of movement instead of turning off with any movement.

Ambitious Assassin's recent adjustment gives it a remarkably high potential for overflowing a magazine, but in areas with sparse enemies, it can be hard to chain kills quickly enough:

Increased allowed time between kills from 5s to 7s.

For Well-Rounded:

Duration increased from 10s to 15s.

Stacking the effect still resets the timer.

Recombination had some reliability issues, so we made some tweaks and adjusted the damage. This was important since this is now available on new weapons:

Tweaks to make this function in PvP as intended.

Now grants up to 100% bonus damage at max stacks in PvE.

50% in PvP.

Zen Moment provides an extraordinarily strong (if not well understood) reduction to recoil angle, but missing would reset the perk completely, making it difficult to sustain:

No longer deactivates on a miss. Now has a 1s timer.

As part of the work on Divinity this Season, we looked at other related hiccups, including Rewind Rounds:

Rewind Rounds now work as intended when hitting the cage created by Divinity.

Genesis has always refilled weapon ammo on breaking shields in PvE, but that hasn't been the case in PvP. We’ve determined that it was a safe call to make to remove this restriction entirely:

Now triggers on breaking player shields.

One Quiet Moment wasn’t really doing the job of providing fast reloads out of combat in cases where a player has dealt with all nearby threats, so we've made the following change:

Faster reactivation after a final blow.

Gun and Run was hard to trigger in PvP or encounters with few enemies, so we also decided to half the number of final blows needed to activate this when going up against most enemy types.

Nerfs
Box Breathing has been providing too strong of a benefit for too little investment on Scout Rifles, so we've pulled it back a smidge to avoid crossing time to kill (TTK) thresholds:

Reduced damage bonus on Scout Rifles by 5%.

Unstoppable Force's damage was a little too high for the level of investment, surpassing other damage perks for strength and uptime. We're keeping the uptime but adjusting the damage:

Reduced damage bonus from 30% to 20%.

One-Two Punch is one part of several combos that allow stacking melee damage buffs to get far higher than intended. Here's what One-Two Punch will look like:

Reduced bonus melee damage as follows:

From 3x to 2x vs most enemies with unpowered melees.

From 1.8x to 1.4x vs most enemies with charged melees.

Reduced the additional bonus vs bosses from 0.5 to 0.25.

Bug Fixes
To Excess (Opulent weapon origin trait)

Triggering this perk across multiple weapons no longer displays a stacking counter on the UI.This perk never stacked its effects, so this change does not change its behavior.

Enhanced Perks
We've taken a pass over several enhanced perks to bring their functionality more in line with the base perks:

Enhanced Unrelenting

Shifted to +5 health regen; removed +5 handling.

Enhanced Perpetual Motion

Removed .1s faster activation and removed the .1s grace period upon ending.

Added 1s faster activation of x2 stacks.

Enhanced Timed Payload

Shifted from range to +5 stability.

Enhanced Explosive Payload

Shifted from range to +5 reload.

Enhanced Firing Line

Added additional 10 handling when in proximity.

Removed increased neutral range.

Enhanced Grave Robber

Swapped +5 reload to +5 handling.

Enhanced Explosive Light

Added one more charge (stack caps at 7).

Enhanced Cornered

Added +10 stability when active.

Enhanced Cold Steel

Weapon energy and weapon magazine capacity now add +10 to be consistent with other ammo capacity-increasing Perks.

Enhanced Vorpal Weapon

Changed from +5 reload to +5 stability.

This will apply to the guard resistance stat on Swords.

Enhanced Genesis

Removed Primary ammo overflow.

Added additional handling.

Enhanced Flash Counter

Increased ammo capacity.

Enhanced Chain Reaction

Updated the description as this provides a different benefit to Swords.

Enhanced Ambitious Assassin

Increased allowed time between final blows from 6s to 8s.

Exotics
Reworks
We identified a handful of weapons that we felt needed a substantial change to really hit the level of “exoticness” that we expect from Destiny 2 Exotics.
The Fundamentals perk (which can be seen on the damage-type switching Exotics: Borealis, Hard Light, and Dead Messenger), while functional, felt like it could do more to grant the modes some identity based on selected damage type, so each damage type now grants different weapon stats (think Elemental Capacitor, if that perk checked the damage type on the weapon instead of the player's subclass).

Added stats to each element

Arc: +25 handling and +5 range.

Solar: +35 reload speed and +20 airborne effectiveness.

Void: +20 stability and +10 aim assist.

Even with the above change to The Fundamentals, we felt like Borealis needed a more substantial change:

Breaking a matched shield now refills the magazine from reserves and allows your next 5 shots to deal bonus damage. Not deactivated by reloading.

Jade Rabbit is a strong Scout Rifle, but its Exotic perk was lackluster, so we've redesigned it to be more of a gameplay loop:

Quickly landing 3 crits returns a round to the magazine and increases the damage of your next body shot.

Stacks up to 3 increased damage body shots.

Resets if you reload.

Nerfs
Three weapons dominate raid Exotic weapon usage, largely because of their effectiveness and ammo efficiency.
Raid Exotic weapon usage, November 15
For example, looking at raid Exotic weapon usage back on November 15 (this chart shows each weapon’s share of all Exotic weapon usage in raids), it's clear that Arbalest, Divinity, and Witherhoard are extremely popular. Divinity coming right behind Arbalest is no accident, but an entire team of six players in a raid only needs a single Divinity, so it’s even more popular than it looks when simply looking at numbers. Another interesting aspect of this data is that Divinity ownership is roughly half the number of those who own Arbalest and Witherhoard. If that number were to go up, popularity of this weapon would also increase.
PvP Exotic Special weapon usage, November 15
Witherhoard is extremely strong in both PvE and PvP, dealing high damage quickly, and for an extended duration. We aren’t making changes to direct hits, and we’re leaving the damage and ammo capacity alone, but since this weapon in its current iteration is too strong in PvE (not to mention that the Taken portal is difficult to deal with in PvP), we’ve made the following change:

Reduced Taken portal duration from 7.5s to 4.5s.

Regarding Divinity, this is a must-have weapon in endgame PvE. That said, the combination of the strongest possible weaken effect, the cage making critical hits trivial, and intrinsic Overload being too strong (as is evident in looking at how this weapon is used in instances like raids), it was time for a change. We looked at several options, including making the weapon harder to use or reducing its uptime by bringing its ammo down, but ultimately felt that its identity is all about making damage phases more enjoyable. Cage uptime remains the same, but we’ve brought the weaken strength down to match other standard weakens in-game. It’s also important to call out that you can still apply a 30% weaken debuff with the cage by combining Divinity with Tether or Tractor Cannon.

Reduced Divinity's weaken from 30% to 15% (still self-buffs to 30%).

Arbalest missed out on the body damage reduction that Lorentz Driver received, making it too easy to get one-hit body shots in a PvP while also not requiring enough precision in PvE:

Reduced body shot damage to match Lorentz Driver.

Gjallarhorn is the highest DPS Rocket Launcher and a great support weapon for Legendary Rocket Launchers, so we picked one of those two roles and opted to lean into its support power:

Reduced primary rocket's impact and detonation damage by 25% (Wolfpack Rounds are unaffected).

This just brings it into the desired band without nerfing it past other Rocket Launchers.

Forerunner received an unintended (and relatively small) damage buff in Season 18's balance update that made it a little too easy to use. After the change, all it took for a final blow was 1-crit and 3-body shots, or 5-body shots in PvP. Here’s what we’ve changed for Season 19:

Reduced Forerunner base damage from 40 to 37, and crit damage from 72 to 67.

Buffs
We track Exotic weapon popularity when deciding what Exotic weapons to buff by looking at how many active players own a weapon and how much they use it in-game.
Lowest 20 Exotic usage by owners, with ownership percent, November 15
Typically, we choose from the 20 or so of the least popular weapons for a potential buff, either directly or via a Catalyst addition. In this case, we've adjusted some that have languished for years and others we simply felt strongly about. We have more of these types of changes coming in Lightfall, though we’ll share those in a later update.
With the addition of the Full Auto setting, we're replacing the Full Auto Trigger System perk on each Exotic that had it.

No Time to Explain: replaced with Feeding Frenzy.

Traveler's Chosen: catalyst perk replaced with Surplus (it still has Osmosis).

Vigilance Wing: catalyst perk replaced with Ensemble.

We’ve fixed an issue where crits from Dead Man's Tale were landing inconsistently depending on whether your aim was above or below the target. We've also made some small changes to its base damage, which will apply to all 120 RPM Scout Rifles:

Now prefers critical hits over body hits in hip-fire if both types of targets are inside the precision aim cone.

Increased body shot damage from 46 to 54, and reduced crit damage from 81 to 80.

We've also been looking for a way to help D.A.R.C.I. players. We know many Guardians would like it to move to the Energy slot, but there's plenty of competition for Sniper Rifles there, even Exotics. With the below change, it's a more interesting choice in the Heavy slot:

Now applies Jolt when damaging targets affected by Personal Assistant.

Increased base airborne effectiveness to 80.

Wish-Ender has always had a hidden damage bonus vs. targets affected by Witherhoard due to its identity as a Taken hunter's weapon:

Increased bonus vs. Witherhoard-blighted targets from 10% to 25%.

While we don’t want Special ammo Snipers to be perfectly accurate from the air without significant investment, we don’t have the same concerns with their Heavy ammo counterparts. That’s where this Whisper of the Worm change comes in:

Increased base airborne effectiveness to 80.

The Prospector has surprisingly high burst damage, but ultimately doesn't excel enough at add clear or DPS for it to have a secure place. With the below change, it is substantially more effective at add clear, though we will continue to monitor when it’s live in-game:

Added Chain Reaction to the intrinsic perk.

The Fourth Horseman has some niche uses, but ultimately suffers from extremely hard-to-control recoil, which we've pulled back:

Decreased recoil by 50%.

Forerunner is a fun weapon in PvE, but it's never been a top pick. Changes to the weapon and its grenade should make it a lot more viable:

Increased crit damage by 30% and The Rock's damage by 60% in PvE.

Reduced ammo cost to activate The Rock from 6 to 4.

Increased damage at the outer edge of The Rock's damage radius from 0% to 20%.

Merciless is extraordinarily strong when ramped up, but it's hard to keep it in that state:

Merciless' decreased charge time on hit now resets on a 5s timer. This timer is refreshed when you land hits.

Rat King is a lot of fun to use, but the allowed distance from allies feels a little too strict as it stands:

Radius required to activate its perk increased from 15m to 20m.

Legend of Acrius has some movement penalties to make it feel weightier. We think that the feel of using the weapon does that sufficiently though, so this is what Acrius users can look forward to:

Removed movement penalties.

Bastion's Season-14 nerf was a little more than it needed, so we've halved it:

Reduced spread angle by 6%.

Quicksilver Storm's grenade intentionally shipped on the weak side. We wanted to see what the uptime of grenades was like in the wild rather than ship them too strong, but we believe it’s safe to increase the damage and the radius a fair bit. We've also fixed a bug with the rockets: they weren't intended to be Arc, and this bug—unchanged—would interfere with the catalyst coming in Lightfall:

Increased PvP maximum grenade damage from 80 to 120, and increased the explosion radius from 3m to 4m.

Switched rocket damage from Arc to Kinetic.

Coldheart's Arc 3.0 rework wasn’t generous enough with Ionic Traces, so:

Reduced cooldown on Ionic Trace generation from 3.5s to 2s.

Now maxes out stability and reload speed when at maximum damage.

Picking up an Ionic Trace now reduces the time it takes to get to max damage.

Grand Overture's loop doesn't feel rewarding enough in its current form, so we've dramatically increased the reward:

Increased missile damage by 50%.

Xenophage only deals Area of Effect (AoE) damage currently, which causes issues against some enemies in PvE. We’re not changing the overall weapon much, but we are addressing that pesky PvE issue. Despite benefiting from solid ease of use, we felt that its damage could be a little higher:

Now deals roughly half of its damage as impact damage, and the rest as detonation.

Overall damage increased by 5%.

When adjusting Divinity, we also looked at some bugs relating to it, including Cloudstrike:

The lightning storm will now correctly activate when hitting Divinity's cage.

Armor
Some Exotic armor pieces were part of combinations allowing extremely high damage output from melee attacks in PvE, so we've brought a couple of these down versus altering enemy health:

Wormgod's Caress: Reduced maximum damage multiplier from 7.5x to 3.5x.

Winter's Guile: Reduced maximum damage multiplier from 7.5x to 3.5x.

Note on Gyrfalcon’s Hauberk: We have a change coming in 6.3.0.1. Here’s a sneak preview of the changes that we believe will address balance concerns in PvP while maintaining a clear identity in the Void space:

Gain Volatile Rounds when exiting invisibility.

When executing a finisher while invisible, this Exotic now gives nearby allies a reserve overshield and give the wearer a temporary bonus to weapon damage.

Things players can look forward to in the future:

A Heavy weapon damage rebalance:

Tinkering with bringing some less effective options up while bringing some damage outliers down.

What's the Lightfall DPS meta? Mysterious.

A large rebalance of the airborne effectiveness stat, making Primary ammo weapons significantly more accurate while airborne without any investment in the stat. Think Icarus-level accuracy from before Season 17. Specifics are still in development.

Some tweaks to the new Shotgun reticles.

A pass at adding Subclass 3.0 verbs to several Exotic weapons:

There are currently seven.

A Void Hunter Walks into a Bar, but You Probably Didn’t See Them

We all, at least at one point or another in our lives, wished for the power of invisibility. With great power comes great responsibility (you’re a real one, Uncle Ben). The PvP community has spoken and they’ve said, “Y’all, something’s gotta change with the power of invisibility when going up against other Guardians.” Here to chat about that exact topic is Sandbox Designer Mike Humbolt.

Mike: Hey everyone! With update 6.3.0.1 scheduled to be released the week of December 13, we’re moving up a change to Void invisibility to help reduce its power in high-level Crucible activities. For full context, we feel it’s necessary to provide some background information on how the radar in Destiny 2 works:
The radar in Destiny 2 is divided into three range-defined sections:

A close-range core, which covers a range of 0 - 6m that pings anytime an enemy – invisible or not – is within its range.

The mid-range pie wedges, covering the 6 – 24-m range.

The gutter, or the outer ring of the radar, which starts at 24m and has a maximum search range of 64m.

After update 6.3.0.1, when a player is invisible, their maximum radar range will be reduced to 24m, and they won’t have access to the information in the gutter range until they are visible again.
While 24m sounds like a long range on paper, our playtests show this reduction in information availability has a significant impact on how invisible players approach engagements and allows potential targets more chances to get the drop on an invisible aggressor. It also offers a way to reposition when they hear the audio cue for invisibility. We’ve found this change has minimal impact on invisibility’s role in PvE.
As always, we’ll be keeping an eye on this as it drops and monitoring feedback and adjust further, if needed.

Season 19 Artifact Mods: Here for a Good Time Not a Long Time

It’s that time again, time to take a look at what the next Season’s artifact will bring to the table when taking on ferocious enemies and baking treats with “Space Grandma” for the rest of the Tower. Here to chat more about what players can expect is Sandbox Design Lead Rodney Thompson.

Rodney: Each Season’s artifact has focused on one of the Light subclasses, reinforcing and enhancing the 3.0 updates that players have been tinkering with throughout 2022. In Season 19, it’s time to give a little love to Stasis . As we've always done in the final Season of the year, you’ll see some reprisals, some reimaginings, and some more experimentation.
The Season 19 artifact will have anti-Champion mods for Hand Cannons, Scout Rifles, Bows, Pulse Rifles, Auto Rifles, and Submachine Guns, as well as the return of the Unstoppable Grenade Launcher mod. The Lucent Finisher mod returns to help you generate some Heavy ammo. We’ve also got some new twists on a few old favorites, including a version of Passive Guard that works with Glaives and a reprisal of Breach and Clear designed to interact with the Void 3.0 rework.
We’re also trying out some experimental mods that don’t follow our usual patterns. Be on the lookout for artifact mods for the chest and leg slots that grant bonuses to resilience and mobility, respectively. We also have a helmet mod that grants additional airborne effectiveness to the weapons you are wielding. The Monochromatic Maestro mod in the class item slot rewards you generously for using weapons and subclasses that match their damage types. We’ve even included a mod aimed specifically at solo players, which should be very useful in tackling those Legend Lost Sectors to get just the right roll on that Exotic you’re looking for!

Community-Created, Community-Voted | Choose Your Arbalest

Back in August, we opened the gates for Guardians to vote on which Exotic weapon gets a shiny new ornament. The eventual winner was none other than the Arbalest Linear Fusion Rifle. Since then, we got straight to work with a community artist to whip up some crafty new designs. After pouring over potential designs, three potential concepts for new ornaments emerged. As for which one will win, well, that’s up to you, but I know which one I’m going to be personally rooting for.
Design #1: Historic
Image Link^{^{^imgur}}
Design #2: Black Armory
Image Link^{^{^imgur}}
Design #3: Synthwave
Image Link^{^{^imgur}}
Guardians can vote through a special email coming out on December 5 alongside a highlight of your Season 18 moments! Check those spam folders (and for those having trouble getting emails, check out this resource here for a potential workaround while the team continues to investigate) and weigh in when you can, because the winning ornament will be announced in the December 15 TWAB before we head into 2023.
We’re particularly excited because this marks the first community-created item that will make its way into the game. Who knows what other community-inspired designs could make it in? But first, we vote!
Now that the designs have been revealed, we want to reiterate a point made during the announcement of this initiative: It’s going to take a bit to go through our content pipeline when looking at this created ornament, so we want to set some expectations up front that you likely won't see this design in Destiny 2 until Season 21. We know that’s a long way out, but we’re glad you get to be along for the ride on this one and an important part of that process.
Community-created and community-voted, we can’t wait to see what you all decide.
For a little added treat, we sat down with the artist themselves, StellarStateLogic! Meet the creator behind the designs with a special TWAB-edition Community Focus dropping this Friday at 9 AM PT.

We're Prime'd and Ready for More Loot

Look. It’s the holidays. ‘Tis the Season and all that, and while we aren’t Santa (red was never really my color anyway), we do have some more free loot up for grabs for those Guardians hanging in the Prime Gaming club. For those looking to switch things up a bit when looking at their gear loadouts, we’ve got the last month of Prime Gaming drops for 2022 to indulge in.
For anyone a little confused on what we’re talking about, Prime Gaming i

https://preview.redd.it/4l5wf6xt2d4a1.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2ad221703a2b500b8e8e2e594283a0973a22fa86

Bloons TD 6 v34.0 - Update Notes!

COMING SOON - Update 34!

While we normally do preview notes, we wanted to skip straight to releasing the full update notes before the update itself to let the community know we have made the difficult decision to delay the Beast Handler. See below for more info on that along with all the New Awesome coming this week! We have also adjusted the currently running Boss event to finish early this week so we can get this update out to players but not have balance changes impact the current leaderboards.

Key New Features

New Boss Bloon: Dreadbloon!
- From the dark underground depths to the skies above, Dreadbloon brings its signature connection to the subterranean to combat even the toughest of Monkey defenses. Destroy Dreadbloon’s earthen armor only to find a lead interior with new special properties - complete immunity to different Monkey Tower categories each time the armor reforms. Even Paragons in those categories are rendered temporarily harmless. As if that’s not enough, Dreadbloon also spawns resilient Rock Bloons each time a skull is reached and until its stone armor is destroyed, and these Rock Bloons are so fearsome that any Monkey set to strong targeting will feel taunted to attack the Rock Bloon before anything else. Watch out for Dreadbloon in upcoming weekly Boss events and win those prestigious Dreadbloon badges!

New Awesome

New Beginner Map: One Two Tree!
- A fun seasonal beginner map with an interesting twist! At certain rounds the trees are taken away to decorate Monkey homes leaving more space in which to build defenses. A bit like an automated Cornfield, but these plots also confer a handful of special properties to the Monkeys placed there. Pay attention to the colors and shapes on the billboard legend to help understand which Monkeys will benefit from each plot. This was a fun system to enable for use in maps, so we’ll plan to do more of this in the future and we also expect this will be heaps of fun for custom challenges - we look forward to seeing your ideas!
New Hero Skin: Sleigh Churchill skin
- Inspired by the work done in Bloons Pop, Churchill’s combat ready sleigh was an easy pick for a seasonal hero skin. We had heaps of fun with this voiceover recording; Kevin Orlando did an amazing job as always, and we promise we only made a couple of sleigh homonym puns!
New Achievement: Invigoration
New Trophy Store Items
- Game & UI: Avatar 66 - Avatar of Wrath, Avatar 68 - Absolute Zero
Competition Winning items
- Banner 24 - Boomerang Glaives by u/ReconScoutTeemo
- Banner 25 - Glyphs by u/PvtMagnuS
Limited Time only
- We’ve had heaps of requests for projectile swaps, so be careful what you wish for. Some really fun ones below, but they are limited time so win those Trophies and get them while you can!
- Co-op - Fullscreen Sleighbells emote
- Banana farm - Presents projectile swap
- Ninja Monkey - Snowflake shuriken projectile swap
- Dart Monkey - Snowballs projectile swap
- Tack Shooter - Icicles and Snowflakes projectile swap
- Avatar 65 - Christmas wreath avatar (Obyn Wolf)
- Avatar 67 - Happy Holidays avatar (Etienne)
- Banner 23 - Seasons Greetings
New CT Team Store items
- Building Props: Christmas Tree prop
- Team Banners: Team Banner 9 - Delicate Snowflake, Team Banner 10 - Roast Banana
- Icons: Alien Icon, Crown Icon
- Frames: Bloon Frame, Military Frame

What’s Not Here - Yet!

Context and Reality Check
- 2022 was a big year for the BTD6 team and Ninja Kiwi overall. Getting out of lockdowns and back to work in person was a huge gift and we were excited to build big and exciting updates. Both Geraldo and Contested Territory pushed the game into new design and technical areas, but also required additional post-launch work.
- From a team perspective, getting out of lockdowns and the return of travel also meant long overdue family reunions and we supported extended time off for those purposes without hesitation. In parallel, we also saw more sick leave this year as unsurprisingly cold and flu season hit us particularly hard in Auckland this year, causing significantly more time off for ill health during September and October. While we did plan more time and did one fewer update this year than last in order to make room for a huge end of year update, this important leave time did impact us more than expected and planned.
- Rather than delay the entire update, we decided to delay two elements so we could still bring the Dreadbloon, the One Two Tree map, Sleigh Churchill, and new Trophy and Team Store items out for holiday.
Dark Dungeon Expert Map
- We’ve been excited to respond to community requests for another difficult Expert map, especially with this excellent and inspiring community design. We implemented as designed and then iterated the room areas and path splits, in particular MOAB-class entering from two paths to prevent single path clustering. We riffed on the secret statue tower and included secrets and traps to match the dungeon theme and balance difficulty across modes and late game. These changes were producing a fantastic quality map but the nuances of the statue tower design, art, code, and QA made it compete for attention with the Beast Handler. At the point where we felt Beast Handler could still be delivered, we had to push Dark Dungeon to update 35 in the new year.
Beast Handler
- This tower is very unique. The Beasts were completely different from any other mechanic in the game, and they of course required 15 new models and animation sets completely separate from the normal tower model and animations. Sharing more about the tower functionality than we have before, the Beasts were also designed to synergize, so several Handlers together would combine their Beasts in order to enable higher tier Beasts. Amazing art and animations were built, signature code was written and optimized, and design was iterated. In many ways, the Beast Handler was completed, bug tested, and nearly ready to release - nearly. Up until last week, we thought the changes were making progress, but ultimately during the last playtests of the week at both Auckland and Dundee offices, we agreed there was too much confusion with the combination system and how Beasts would interact with other Handlers. Ninja Kiwi has always cared about quality and providing our players with the best possible experience and the tower just didn’t feel like it was there. It wasn’t up to the standard we set ourselves and the standard we hold the game to. While we are extremely disappointed that we won’t be able to release a new tower this year, the team felt it was the right call to make as the Beast Handler was just not quite ready to be unleashed. This was a very difficult call after all the incredibly hard teamwork that was put in to get this done - for us to simply say that it is not yet ready to play. We can and will make this better but with the amount of revision needed, we are moving the Beast Handler out at least two updates to update 36 at the earliest. This is not a set date for the release, however. We are giving ourselves a few months to go back to the fundamental design and make sure we can make good on our commitment to quality. We will be working hard to get the Beast Handlers into your hands but we want to release a tower you all find enjoyable, challenging (in a good way!) and, most importantly, fun! We really appreciate the love and support you have all provided us with this year and we hope you will understand the decision we've made and why.

Game Changes / Additions

A number of localization fixes, especially centered around the newer Polish language option, thank you to everyone who offered their feedback on that.
Advanced challenges & Time Attack tiles in CT will no longer earn XP
Failed CT score submissions due to internet problems are now able to attempt to resubmit
Boss Events now support multipliers to Boss Speed & Boss HP as an event rule
Boss Events now support paragon count limits as an event rule
CT Events now support splitting up tile degradation rules based on the tile type
CT Events rules now support the option of tiles going ‘stale’, not awarding any more points but still remaining captured - we’ve built out some systems to address issues players are having with how CT works currently and will be trying some things out in future now that the systems are in place
The Trophy Store icon on the main menu will now display a notification when there are limited time items available that you don’t yet own

Bug Fixes & General Changes

Resolved an issue with placing certain towers near the top of the map preventing their model from loading
Resolved a game crash on boost upgrading a hero that has already leveled past 10
Save icon on maps should no longer interact with clicks as if it is it’s own separate button
Resolved a crash that could occur when exiting a custom input mode for a tower
Resolved an issue preventing first game launch without internet for no reason
Resolved a number of map specific placement issues
Resolved a crash that could occur when quickly entering and exiting from CT
Resolved an edge case with host re-joining lobby causing games to run in different modes for each player
Resolved an issue where focus markers could remain on CT map after new event start
Resolved a noticeable lag spike on game saving the player profile
Resolved an issue with stacking model assets on CT island menu
Resolved an issue with store purchased relics & their regular counterparts sometimes not stacking together
Resolved an issue with CT King item restarting its full animation on every interaction
Resolved an issue that could occur with the pre-game prep knowledge spikes being removed if not hitting any Bloons
Resolved an issue with remaining Race Passes sometimes being unable to update display to the correct amount that you have
Added ‘Teams’ icons to available player banners that are available from their Teams
Resolved an issue where creating a paragon from the middle path T5 tower would recover cooldown instantly
Resolved an issue where default hero skins were not initially displayed as a selectable hero skin choice
All CT Team Store notification Pips should now be clearable by clicking on the items
Resolved an issue with the ‘Go to Trophy Store’ button instead saying ‘remove’ on banners you don't have
Removed Hidden T-Posing Monkeys in the background easter egg that could occur when a menu is opened over the top of the Main Menu.
Resolved some language filtering issues
Optimizations made to the Team Search / Quick Join search results
Resolved some low framerate issues on specific pixel devices
Resolved an issue with Monkey Team rewards not visually displaying for all players in co-op
Resolved a crash that could occur when purchasing race passes on the pause menu
Resolved a crash that could occur when loading a save with a necromancer in an odyssey
Resolved some menu UI situations that displayed a blackened out background
Potentially fixed that old crooked medal visual bug that still gets reported a lot
A number of behind the scenes optimizations

Dart Monkey

Resolved niche cases in which Juggernaut’s projectiles would not properly be able to hit targets again after rebounds

Boomerang Monkey

5xx Glaive Lord DoT can no longer be applied to DDTs from a camo village without being able to deal damage to lead

Tack Shooter

Inferno Ring should now swap to 'first' target on upgrade purchase

Monkey Ace

Resolved an issue with Goliath doomship degree 100 end trail fx were being culled from the simulation incorrectly

Heli Pilot

Comanche xx4 upgrade damage should no longer incorrectly change with crosspathing

Super Monkey

5xx True Sun God resolved a potential Co-op error on purchasing upgrade
4xx & 5xx Super Monkeys should no longer attack during upgrade animation

Captain Churchill

Captain Churchill's Tank Drop Trophy Store item's animation now works correctly again

Adora

Resolved an issue with Vengeful Adora projectile assets not correctly displaying

Etienne

Resolved an error where Etienne would not record all stats correctly to your profile
Lv3 Drone Swarm ability now has a forced expiration after the drone swarm duration +10s to prevent them getting stuck
ETn beam down animation should now play correctly on loading a save

Platform Specific fixes

Windows Store: Resolved a crash that could occur on save
Epic version: Webview now supports Linking Codes
Apple Arcade: Monkey Names trophy item is no longer available for Child Accounts
Apple Arcade: Resolved an infinite loading screen some users could come across
Apple Arcade: Resolved an issue with Save Slot 3 not saving to iCloud when using multiple devices logged into the same iCloud account
Apple Arcade: Resolved an issue with fresh local saves not conflicting with remote saves
Apple Arcade: New UI to notify players of their iCloud account's enabled/disabled state
MacOS: can no longer set game resolution to smaller than 800 x 600 since it cannot properly support a resolution that small
MacOS: Resolved a game softlock on initial loading screen after selecting new cloud data on older version of the game
Resolved a crash that could occur on certain iOS devices
Resolved a map compression issue for the Alpine Run map on Android devices.

Balance Changes

Dart Monkey
While not appreciated by all because of a lack of map situations it applies well in, we enjoy the quite specific niche that Juggernaut fills. However, we wanted to make some minor tweaks allowing it to apply itself better against fortified ceramics & reducing the exceptionally high ultra-juggernaut secondary balls pierce in favour of damage that can be more reliably used up.

4xx Juggernaut fortified damage 0 > 2
5xx Ultra-Juggernaut main ball fortified damage 0 > 5
5xx Ultra-Juggernaut mini juggernaut ball damage 1 > 2
5xx Ultra-Juggernaut mini juggernaut ball fortified damage 0 > 2
5xx Ultra-Juggernaut mini juggernaut ball pierce 100 -> 50

Boomerang Monkey
In many situations, especially moving into the deeper lategame, T4 MOAR Glaives didn’t quite feel like enough of a step up over the T3; leading on into the high ceramic cleanup of the T5 we have decided to introduce that ceramic bonus earlier at T4 along with allowing Glaives to overcome their long-standing weakness of being consumed by nearby blockers at T4 with MOAR Glaives ignoring all blocking objects completely. In efforts to cut down on unnecessarily high pierce for more reliable base stats Glaive Lord is having its excessive orbit pierce converted into high base ceramic damage bonus on the orbit & an added bonus to the main attack as well. When the Dart & Boomerang paragons were first introduced the more expensive T5 upgrades were not taken into account for balance as much as the raw paragon upgrade cost, in addition to this we have for a long time taken a no-MK approach to general game balance, however paragons have proven that they should follow the opposite of this ideal and be balanced around a max MK assumed approach, due to MK balance the Dart Paragon gains an incredible degree bonus, so we would like to counterbalance some of that advantage in the base Boomerang design by reducing the price greatly.

4xx MOAR Glaives gains bonus to ceramic +1
4xx MOAR Glaives now ignores blocking objects
5xx Glaive Lord Glaive main attack gains bonus to ceramic +8
5xx Glaive Lord Rotating Glaives bonus to ceramic increased 5 > 8
5xx Glaive Lord Rotating Glaives pierce reduced to 80
Boomerang Paragon price reduced from $400k > $325k

Bomb Shooter
Cluster Bombs has far superior pierce over top path which is the actual pierce path while also providing better overall cleanup power, so for now we’d like to reign those in a little closer.

xx3 Cluster Bombs cluster pierce reduced 10 -> 8
3xx Really Big Bombs pierce increased 50 > 60

Ice Monkey
Ice Monkey base pierce is too high, very easily countering large numbers of strong Bloons early, mid or late in the game for small investment, leading to very low tiers of ice monkey (below t3) being highly effective spam options over upgrading your ice. We are reworking some of this base pierce to require crosspath investment and buffing the damage Ice 3xx Ice Shards to compensate for some of its reduced pierce.

000 Ice Monkey pierce reduced from 40 -> 30
xx3 Cryo Cannon pierce reduced from 30 -> 20
x2x Deep Freeze now also increases pierce by +10
x2x Deep Freeze price increased from 350 -> 450
x3x Arctic Wind price reduced from $2900 -> 2800
3xx Ice Shards base damage increased 1 -> 2
xx4 Icicles can now targets MOABs but not slow

Glue Gunner
Glue Gunner base level doesn’t fit in as a starter placement, while not really changing that at all we feel for now if it was cheaper than $250 you'd be able to start with 2 dart monkeys & a glue on medium for more casual variety. With an expensive tier 2 and the T3 breaking the $3k mark Glue Hose doesn’t feel justifiable a lot of the time so base cost is being shifted up to T4. Bloon Solver appears to be in a fair state now but with low value save up into it from Dissolver & Liquifier, slight improvements have been made here to assist them in cleaning up in some cases it feels they should.

Base cost reduced from $275 > 225
x3x Glue Hose price reduced from $3250 > 2900
x4x Glue Strike price increased from $3500 > 3850
3xx Bloon Dissolver pierce increased from 1 > 2
4xx Bloon Liquefier ceramic bonus increased 1 > 2
3xx Bloon Dissolver tic rate 0.65s > 0.575

Sniper Monkey
All paths of the Sniper Monkey are really starting to show strong use in different cases, and we’re quite happy with this, although bottom path feels like it relies a little too heavily on the top-end upgrades for such an overall cheap path, we are shifting a small amount of price out from the T3 into the T5

xx3 Semi-Automatic price reduced from $3500 > 3000
xx5 Elite Defender price increased from $14,000 > 14,500

Monkey Buccaneer
While working on the Ace paragon we found a way to make homing appear much cleaner on super long-range attacks, so we’d like to try out this new setup on the Flagship for a little experiment to see if this improves the gameplay feeling there. Recent changes were very popular for Pirate Lord, so now it no longer feels like it needs to be such a cheap T5. While this isn’t enough of a change to curb its newfound power too much the price will be increasing. Buccaneer Farming at the base level is in-line with other farming options, slightly weaker but with enough dps to compensate, we recently experimented with lowering the benefit Trade Empire grants to T3s to slow down this early benefit & this turned out to be quite successful however they still scale too well too quickly for a low price so we’re bringing that down more.

5xx Flagship new homing style
x5x Pirate Lord $21,000 -> 26,000
xx5 Trade Empire benefit to xx3's reduced from $15 > 10

Monkey Ace
Sky Shredder has a higher skill ceiling than most towers so has evaded many nerfs, but is still too good for what it offers so is finally seeing a slight price increase. Same as mentioned above for the flagship, we are experimenting with new homing changes for the Spectre & Flying Fortress to improve their feeling. Users have noticed that Goliath Doomship's ability overall has far less pierce than the T4 ability, while this rarely matters at all the pierce value downgrading by that much was not an intended reduction, so we are bumping up each of those ability bombs to bring the total pierce up.

5xx Sky Shredder price increased from $40,000 > 41,500
xx4 Spectre new homing style
Goliath Doomship carpet-bomb pierce increased 50 -> 150

Mortar Monkey
The recent Mortar 5xx rework significantly devalued 502 crosspath, undermining the work we previously put into trying to balance that choice, likewise 205 Mortar is not often used as base damage isn't relevant for Blooncineration compared to attack speed, following along with the idea of Top Path improving burny stuff damage in addition to base hit damage both of these paths will now benefit from increase burn DoT in such a way.

502 The Biggest One DoT damage increased 25 > 45
204 Shattering Shells DoT damage increased 5 > 8
205 Blooncineration DoT damage increased 5 > 8
205 Blooncineration MOAB DoT damage increased 100 > 150

Dartling Gunner
Laser Cannon feels it needs a small price buff. BADS on the bottom currently feels like it brings far too much power to carry the midgame for cheap so price is being shifted around from the T5 down into the T4.

3xx Laser Cannon price reduced from $4250 -> $3750
xx4 BADS cost $12000 -> $16000
xx5 BEZ cost $58000 -> $54000

Wizard Monkey
Wizard Archmage currently doubles the attack speed of the main attack along with adding a sizable MOAB damage bonus, but these benefits are not applied to the extra attacks that it gains as a 533 tower, which specifically makes the 520 crosspath benefits feel disappointing and the base dragon's breath it gains quite insignificant to the main tower. Phoeniis still far too strong for an extremely cheap T4, so cost is being shifted from the T5 down.

510 Archmage's Fireball damage increased to match x3x bonus fireball damage 1 > 9
5xx Archmage base attack rate increases now applies to secondary attacks
- 510 Fireball rate 2.2 > 1.1
- 520 WoF rate 6.5 > 3.25
- 5xx Dragon's Breath rate 0.1 > 0.05
- 5xx Shimmer rate 2.5 > 1.25
5xx Archmage now also adds bonus MOAB damage to extra attacks
- 500 Dragon's Breath MOAB bonus added +2
- 510 Fireball MOAB bonus added +9
- 520 Wall of Fire MOAB bonus added +1
x4x Summon Phoenix price increased from $4500 > 6000
x5x Wizard Lord Phoenix price reduced from 54,000 > 52,500

Super Monkey
Tech Terror's ability runs into niche issues before r100 with some cases causing it to break BFBs into ceramic rushes instead of destroying them entirely, we found a very small damage buff resolves this up to r100, solving this problem for the base game modes, and while we were here added for the possibility for the ability to also deal consistant critical hits.

x4x Tech Terror ability damage increased from 2500 > 2600
x5x Anti Bloon ability damage increased from 5000 > 5200
x4x Tech Terror every 3rd ability use crits for +50%

Druid
Druid’s vine brambles are very bottom-heavy in power, with high performance leading into a comparably small T4 increase, so some of the pierce is being moved up into the T4.

x3x Druid of the Jungle brambles pierce reduced from 30 > 20
x4x Jungle's Bounty brambles pierce increased from 30 > 40

Banana Farm
Bank is a little too much more efficient than any other Banana Farm option, this price nerf should leave it so it really somewhat still is but not so far ahead.

x3x Monkey Bank price increased from $3500 > 3800

Engineer
Overclock's considerable longer duration benefit on lower tiers currently serves little purpose and only leads to weirdness in upgrading boosted towers, so for now we’d rather minimize this on the early cases that don’t serve much purpose .

x4x Overclock buff to T0 reduced 1.75x > 1
x4x Overclock buff to T1 reduced 1.5x > 1
x4x Overclock buff to T2 reduced 1.25x > 1

Quincy
Quincy is a fairly average jack of all trades early on and does what’s required of him there fine, and while he’s an entry level hero that is very much meant to embody that jack of all trades but master of none feeling we’d like to add a little later end-game performance boost to his currently weak lv19 so he doesn’t drop off as much.

Lv19 Quincy gains projectiles 2 > 3

Obyn Greenfoot
Obyn’s Wall of Trees increase at level 20 feels like it can be a bit more of an increase, to assist him in his cleanup duty of end game super ceramics more effectively.

Lv20 Obyn Wall of Trees pierce increased from 5000 > 9001

Benjamin
Some players don’t want their Trojan to activate until a certain point, or at all. The Trojan is as it is by design, however since currently Ben’s location doesn’t seem to matter much we feel that by limiting the Trojan to not target through walls this will allow that strategic use to be made if chosen via clever positioning depending on the map.

Ben Lv7 Bloon Trojan can no longer attack through walls

Geraldo
Geraldo's Sharpening Stone still stands out as extremely powerful for such a low cost, and how early he can be placed as a fast leveling hero allows for extremely easy power ramping from early on.

Lv1 Geraldo placement cost increased from $600 > $700
Lv5 Sharpening stone duration reduced 15 > 10 rounds

Relic Balance
A small list of number changes have been changed up for CT Relic Knowledge. We are mainly here hoping to create a standout use-case difference for Restoration & Regeneration rather than one being purely better in every way.

MOAB Clash: reduced from +3 > 2
Regeneration: restore lives/round (up to starting lives) 10 > 20
Restoration: restore lives/round (up to starting lives +200) 20 > 10
Starting Cash: starting cash bonus reduced from $300 -> $250
Air and Sea: discount amount reduced from 10% > 5%
Box of Monkey: free tower cost limit reduced from $500 -> $400
Primary Primates: Primary Monkeys discount 10% -> 8%
Military Monkeys: Military discount 10% -> 8%
Magic Monkeys: Magic discount 10% -> 8%
Monkey Tycoon: All Monkeys discount 5% -> 4%
Heartless: regrow rate reduction 25% > 50%

Sauda
Saving this for last, as it is the biggest rework here with the most to say. There was too much already changed to include even further changes with her all at once, but we want to take this rework further after seeing your feedback, so Sauda fans please take your time over the holidays to really get a feel for how this changes things.
At first this looks like a lot of numbers going down, but that is not our only intention with the changes, Sauda’s feeling is far too much of a ‘set and forget’ play, leading her to be extremely overvalued on simple maps but have a highly lackluster feeling on many difficult ones that require further interaction. To steer away from this her base power is being lowered at a number of points, with some tweaks to both her abilities overall improving their power mainly with a huge buff to her level 7 & 11 Bloon Weakness debuffs now benefitting her abilities with CONSIDERABLY more damage than previously (previously +2 regardless of the ability damage)

Lv2 pierce reduced from 6 > 5
Lv3 Leaping Sword DoT damage increased from 1 > 2
Lv3 Leaping Sword DoT duration increased from 5 > 6.5
Lv3 Leaping Sword DoT duration now increased by +0.5 for each level
(Lv20 Leaping Sword DoT duration from this is increased 10 > 15)
Lv3 Leaping Sword pierce increased from 20 > 30
Lv10 Sword Charge damage increased from 20 > 30
Lv12 Leaping Sword Bonus impact bonus damage to MOABs increased from 130 > 160
Lv12 Leaping Sword DoT damage increased from 1 > 3
Lv15 Leaping Sword DoT damage increased from 1 > 4
Lv20 Leaping Sword DoT damage reduced from 16 > 6
Lv12 Leaping Sword damage reduced from 70 > 40
Lv15 Leaping Sword damage increased from 70 > 80
Lv20 Leaping Sword damage reduced from 570 > 400

Bloon Weakness Lv7 & Lv11 much larger bonus to abilities, potentially doubling total damage.

Lv7+ Leaping Sword impact bonus to Stunned Bloons 2 > leaping sword damage/2 (10)
Lv7+ Leaping Sword impact bonus to Stunned MOABs 2 > leaping sword damage (20)
Lv7+ Leaping Sword DoT bonus to Stunned Bloons 2 > leaping sword DoT damage (2)
Lv7+ Leaping Sword DoT bonus to Stunned MOABs 20 > 10 + leaping sword DoT damage * 5 (20)
Lv10+ Sword Charge bonus to Stunned Bloons 2 > sword charge damage / 2 (15)
Lv10+ Sword Charge bonus to Stunned MOABs 2 > sword charge damage (30)
Lv11+ Same bonuses applied to all cases for Sauda's Lv11 Bloon weakness bonus
These changes carry up through all levels with all damage increases to Leaping Sword and Sword Charge (Levels 12, 15, 20 increase leaping sword damage, Levels 16, 20 increase Sword Charge damage)

Looking Forward

While we need to look at our planning overall and learn from the places where we bit off more than we could chew, we’re still planning on incredible updates for next year!

Console: we’ve made great progress on the Xbox and Playstation versions of BTD6, and we will have these released as early next year as possible given the approval process on these platforms; we’ll update on this as we have meaningful news but we can tell you that 4 player couch co-op is truly awesomer!
Update 35: we need these first updates of the year to be smaller so the team can rest and relax over the holidays, but we will have Dark Dungeon and as much extra as we can squeeze in
Update 36: we’ll be pushing to have Beast Handler ready for this update but we’ll continue to hold it until it’s ready; there will be extra awesome here as well but still juggling whether that would be a Paragon or Boss
Key Goals: we’re still brainstorming and pitching ideas for next year so there will be more than the list below but these are areas where we are excited to build new awesome
- Quests: both as events and as a player-paced progression system, we’re already underway with a system to support multiple linked games with short narratives and special rewards
- New Heroes, Paragons, and Bosses: with particular focus on new mechanics, challenge variety, and exciting visuals
- New Team Events and Features: more ways for Teams to play, compete, and have fun together, focusing on skill rather than grind, as well as new Team tools to help find like-minded players and safely communicate
- Creators: improved coordination around releases, creator events, and expanding the creator code program
- Map Editor and Player Creators: a fully functional in-game map creation tool with a curation pipeline is a huge goal; we’ll attempt to build this in stages so we can get more frequent community feedback about what should come next
2023 and Beyond: we’ll start working on these pieces in 2023 but we’re not sure whether they will land in 2023 or after
- Mod support: whether via direct support or 3rd party tools, we’ll be developing better ways for modders to have fun with the game while improving the tracking and compartmentalizing of mod-based play to alleviate friction with accounts, main game progress, and fair competitive play
- Tower & Bloon Editor: potentially overlapping with mod support, we’ll continue working on ways to play and have fun tweaking existing Monkey Towers and Bloons, and ultimately create a safely curated pipeline for new Tower and Bloon ideas
- Player Creator payback: a challenge on the technical, legal, and financial fronts, we still think that it’s important to share back with player creators if they help create valuable content for others. We love the idea that someone might get into game design and development because of the work they started in BTD6 or that others might be able to make a little bit of extra money and make their lives better by playfully working on a game they already enjoy. This is a massive challenge but we like the old wisdom that rising tides should lift all boats, and we know Admiral Brickell agrees.

And finally, Happy Holidays! We absolutely love this game and working together as a team on it. We are so thankful to our players, our community, the content creators and the added entertainment they create, the player creators who push gameplay even further, and the amazing fan art, ideas, and questions that inspire us to do our best. We have huge plans for where to take Bloons TD 6 and we hope you all will keep playing and have fun helping us get there. Let’s all plan on having a very happy 2023 together as we look for more ways to involve the community in our vision and plans for where we go next, and until then please know that everyone at Ninja Kiwi wishes you the absolute best for a restful and playful holiday season!

Last updated: Nov 4th, 08:25 AM CET
EDIT VI: Cleaning up. This thread has been unpinned from the sub, I thus anticipate that not many people will see this list or my updates. I will still update for the next week at least, but if interest dies down, I will retire this list.
Thank you all for your amazing support.

If you're reporting an issue, please look if it's already here - most messages and comments I get report issues that are already here.

Please also check Infinity Ward's Trello board.

Bugs & issues:

Crashes
- general crashes & instability (all platforms)
- ~~Crashes when in a squad~~ - fixed
- Attachment tuning crashes for some players (under investigation)
- Spec Ops: Low Profile crashes upon completion (Reported from PC and PS5)
- Crashes related to Killcam (skipping or just viewing)
UI & Menu
- Import settings from older games not working
- ~~Emblems / calling cards cannot be changed for some, also applies to the showcase (All platforms)~~ - fixed
- Some people get thrown into Warzone 2.0, seems to be related to being in a party (see this comment) (detailed explanation / step by step recreation here)
- Having to reboot the game to switch from multiplayer into campaign and vice versa is all kinds of stupid
- Lots of notifications in the notification center (the bell on the top right) stay blank and are non-interactive
- Friends filters won't stay on the selected option (All/Activision only/Steam only)
- Customizing Horangi Operator shows Wyatt from MW2019 as an option (only the button)
- Lots of people only see Fender in Lobby, and all players as Level 1
- Clicking the Scrollbar on the operator selection menu throws you back to the main menu
In-Game
- Client-side smoke-effects make fair gunfights impossible
- Pinging sometimes won't work (PC) - IW is aware and working on a fix
- Riot shield can make you invincible
- Spawn system: general improvements needed, a lot of the times people spawn behind players and get an easy kill
- Pinging enemies during death screen gives you wallhacks - IW is aware and working on a fix
- Broken ADS animation when certain gun/attachment combinations are equipped
- If you mount a sniper bipod on the edge of a surface while holding forward, you get launched and can get outside/on top of the map
- When creating a loadout with an M4 blueprint , psome players don't have a primary at all, and are stuck using their secondary weapon for the entire match (example)
- Xbox: VTOL, SAE, Stealth bomber (maybe more killstreaks) stuck on the tablet screen (Workaround by u/ReviveTheProcess here)
- When throwing a drill charge on a riot shield, if the player swaps weapons before it goes off, they receive no damage
- When muting players / all players, they won't stay muted
- Muting oneself also doesn't keep one muted
- More bugs around being unable to mute/unmute a lobby
- Toggling Hybrid Sights turns the reticle off (more info here)
- ~~Texture/Map exploit on Mercado Las Almas~~ ~~here~~ ~~and~~ ~~here- see also this~~ ~~comment~~ - fixed
- Survivor let's you pick up a third weapon (see here)
- Skins do not show on the riot shield when it is on your back. Instead, it shows the default skin
- On some maps (eg Zarqwa Hydroelectric, Santa Seña ...) the sun glare is overdone, reflections are blinding
- Map limits not visible on the minimap
- Grenade / Drillcharges clip through the map
Technical issues:
- ~~NVIDIA-specific: Some players report flickering/crashing with latest drivers 526.47 -~~ ~~rollback to previous drivers until NVIDIA releases a fix~~ ~~(also~~ ~~recommended by IW~~) - NVIDIA released a hotfix update. More here
- Spec-Ops: custom keybinds reset after every mission or when entering the mode
- Loadouts reset or are replaced by generic loadouts
- Graphics settings keep resetting/changing for some players
- When in a party, only the party leader can edit loadouts. Other party members only see default loadouts and might get kicked back to the lobby
- Perks sometimes won't unlock when reaching the required level
- Daily challenges not tracking properly
- Quick Resume on Xbox doesn't work, game has to be restarted
- Disc-owners on PlayStation may get a "Disc read error"
- "Black void" visual bug (here and here)
- The "LSD" bug (example)
- ~~PS4: audio keeps dropping out~~ - fixed
Gunsmith:
- Horizontal arrows overlay with the mastery camo area, making one or the other sometimes not click-able (excellent video by u/feelsmoxximan, more of his points below)
- Slider in gunsmith camo menu is broken
- Some attachments don't change the gun at all after tuning (also see the video by TheXclusiveAce)
- Some attachments have no indication on how to unlock them
- Some attachments have inconsistent explanations and pros/cons (another example)
- Attachments sometimes don't unlock even though the player has fulfilled the necessary requirements (example) - IW is aware and working on a fix
- Progress for camos not tracking
- Some guns, like the Minibak, not unlocking, even though requirements have been met
- Renaming/deleting Loadouts 8 - 10 renames/deletes Loadouts 1 - 3
- Firemodes do not persists / cannot be set (also applies in-game, they reset upon death)
Performance:
- second-long-lag in-lobby
- Stuttering/desync and lag during gameplay (more examples here)
- Netcode (or other issue): getting 5+ hitmarkers without killing an enemy, but dying in less than three shots
- Bullets go through enemies/dummies in the firing range, hinting at a bigger problem concerning hit-registration
Campaign:
- People's progress is getting deleted
- Campaign achievements won't unlock properly

Missing content:

Missing guns
- Honeybadger
- M13
Missing general features:
- Weapon Inspection in Gunsmith
- Weapon Inspection in firing range
- Attachment quick-swap in firing range
- Custom Blueprint-saving
- No ability to turn off crossplay on PC and Xbox
- No custom reticles
- Multiplayer challenges to unlock specific content (calling cards, emblems, skins, etc.) -> NEW: PrestigeIsKey uncovered hundreds of calling cards, emblems and blueprints via CDL Private Matches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaI3vL5nnjo
- No way to unlock new charms / no visible challenges some charms do apparently unlock, but no one knows how
- No finishers to choose / no choice menu
Missing Maps:
- Museum
Barracks, including:
- Combat record
- Detailed stats for guns etc.
- Leaderboards
Missing modes (that were promised for Launch):
- Hardcore (Tier 1) (coming November 16th with Season 1)
Missing UI elements
- Unlock-notifications in-game
- XP-token countdown
- Medals
Missing misc:
- Vault edition perks (XP tokens) are missing - Please note: They were only for people who bought the game through the CoD Store. Will not cross this off yet, but be aware of this.
- ~~PS4/PS5: Oni operator missing for some players~~ - fixed, IW recommends restoring licenses
- No evidence of lobbies not disbanding
- First blood sticker from Beta is missing
- Some users can redeem promo codes (Burger King, Mountain Dew) but will not receive their rewards (maybe Steam only)

Most requested changes:

Generally better / more communication with the community on TwitteReddit
UI
- Generally make the UI less confusing and remove redundant clicks & menus (and another great post by u/stealliberty)
- Unneccessary screen from clicking on Quick-Play and then Start
- Gunsmith
  - Vertical instead of horizontal list
  - Group camos in a category list like in MW19 so we can quickly find the one we want instead of having them all in one giant horizontal list
  - Show us detailed stats for guns / have a toggle like in Cold War and Vanguard
  - Have stats pop-up in firing range
  - Don't have every attachment blindly affect ADS speed
  - Bring back free-look
  - Bring back "Deselect all attachments" button
  - Calling Cards & Emblems should be visible in-game (eg when killed) and in Pre-Game-Lobby - otherwise pretty pointless
- Show deaths on Scoreboard (at least in Life-based modes like TDM etc.)
- Improve unlocked camos visibility
- Show (daily) challenges in the pause menu
- Bring back a proper After Action Report
- Persistent chat like in MW19
Perk system
- Either drastically reduce the earn-rate for the bonus and ultimate perk-tier, or revert back to the old perk system (currently UAVs are overpowered this way)
- Bring back Specialist
Remove the Dead Silence activation sound entirely
Further tweak footsteps so they're not/barely audible through thick walls
Accessibility:
- Add a toggle to enable darkened flashbang-effect
- Add/enhance the color blindness options to make the game playable for all players (reticle color, filters, etc.)
Specific perk changes
- Bring back Ninja in some form
- Have Ghost only work when you're moving
XP tokens should only countdown during actual gameplay, not in-menu and in-lobby
Bring back Map voting (Cold War had it even with disbanding lobbies)
Split Screen like in previous games
Game modes:
- Separate Ranked Playlist with Ranking System and SBMM enabled, SBMM off for a Casual mode
- General. 10v10 or 12v12 playlists for the larger maps
- Gunfight
- Gun Game
- Control
- Other party modes (One in the Chamber, Prop Hunt, ...)
- Capture the Flag

This is my second settings guide following my popular Witcher 3 guide in 2015 on the PS4 board. I've seen a lot of complaints about Forspoken over the last few days, so I played the demo from top to bottom and experienced every single setting every which way imaginable.
Most people might not know this, but the game has a grapple hook (SQUARE button) that you can use to climb cliffs by holding SQUARE and aiming it at the brown crystals against mountainsides. You can also use it in combat to close distances by tapping SQUARE.
My initial reaction to the demo was meh/clunky/washed out graphics. IMO a 70/100 at best +/- the story. I couldn't get more than a B in the combat rating. After I went through all the settings I completed the entire demo one more time, all chests, all enemies I saw, and never lost my STAR combat rating throughout. The game's not perfect, but IMO it's now an 82/100 +/- the story. So let's get into it:
To get to the settings menu you just press the OPTIONS button then SETTINGS while in-game. You'll see you can R1 for different tabs of settings so let's start with:
DIFFICULTY SETTINGS
___________________________________________
DIFFICULTY: NORMAL
I love playing games on HARD, the better the challenge the better the game. This is not one of those games. This game is about speed and having a go go go attitude. The difficulty bump does nothing but slow down the pace you want to try and keep up. The enemies have increased HP, but they're not faster or smarter, and you'll rarely get hit so the increased damage is negligible. Why fight 2 crocs in 1 location when you could fight 6 crocs total in 3 different locations in the same amount of time?
AIM ASSIST: ON
If you're using a controller every game should have Aim Assist ON, it's just simpler.
SPELL-SWITCHING SLOWDOWN: DEFAULT (SLOW)
You could FULL STOP, but graphically it's nicer that the background is slowly flowing.
DAMAGE RECEIVED: DEFAULT
You won't get hit much due to later settings so this isn't a factor.
STAMINA RECOVERY SPEED: FAST
This is a game of max speed, but FAST is fast enough that you never have to worry about stamina recovery. You could go FASTEST, but you won't notice it while playing.
AUTOMATICALLY USE HEALING ITEMS: OFF (with caveat)
Unfortunately, the game's HP bar is fish bowled and it's not readily apparent you're even low health sometimes. This is particularly noticeable against the final enemy in the demo who hits harder than anything else, and if you're at half health it can one shot you before you even realize you were hurt to begin with. However, if you have it ON you're more likely to unknowingly waste heals versus scrubs when you didn't have to use them in the first place. So for regular fights OFF, for the biggest fight ON if you're so inclined.
ENEMY KNOCKDOWN TIME: DEFAULT
Game's easy enough as is, if you knock down 3 enemies at the same time you got to go go go to get them all in time. Increased KO time can also be an upgrade stat on jewelry so better to upgrade it there instead.
AUTOMATIC SUPPORT SPELL-SWITCHING: OFF (with caveat)
This is the big one for this section, and one you should definitely try ON and OFF to see which you like more.
R2 spells are designed for either long-range/group of mobs/short range. So you'd still open the R1 spell wheel to choose which attack you want for the specific enemy you're facing.
L2 is your support spells. These are the spells that do added damage and different buffs, etc. It largely doesn't matter what the support spell is, so if it's not on cooldown, use it.
Toggling ON means L2 will always have a support spell ready when available. You use the spell on L2 and it'll automatically change to another support spell that's usable. Once you use all your support spells it'll switch to a usable spell once the current cooldown is gone, rinse repeat.
The benefit is that you don't have to go through the spell wheel to check which spells if any are still on cooldown and you don't have to keep switching to use them.
The bad part is that maybe you don't want to use a specific support spell when it switches automatically, although they should be used as often as possible + if you don't want to use something you can still hold L1 to spell wheel to something else.
All in all it helps people who find the spells a bit clunky. You do have to memorize what the symbols or name of the spells are though since you might try to do a kick spell (close range spell) at long range if you're just spamming.
In this regard it'll add creativity to the game because when you see a long range support spell is next you might back up, then see it's a kick spell after that you push in, etc. The game will dictate the flow for you, thus removing the clunkyness of deciding what to do next. However, if you're like me and you like charging and kicking spells more than summoning allies and swords, keep it OFF, otherwise you won't see those spells for a while.
Edit: I made a video demonstrating what it looks like while it's ON just to give an idea of the possibilities:
Forspoken Demo - YouTube
AUTO-EVASION: OFF
You'll be able to see enemy attacks coming a mile away due to further settings so this isn't necessary.

CONTROL SETTINGS
___________________________________________
CONFIRM BUTTON: X
LEFT/RIGHT STICK SENSITIVITY: 1.2
You want to go fast, you want to parkour, spin, snipe, flip all over all at once? Increase the stick sensitivity. Personally I liked it at 1.2, but I could see others going as high as 1.4.

CAMERA SETTINGS
___________________________________________
HORIZONTAL CAMERA MOVEMENT: NORMAL
VERTICAL CAMERA MOVEMENT: NORMAL
ROTATION SPEED: 1.2
Keep it the same as the stick sensitivity. If 1.4 stick sensitivity then 1.4 rotation speed.
AUTOMATIC CAMERA ADJUSTMENT: ALWAYS
You want to go fast, and the only way to go fast is to see where you're going. Keep it on ALWAYS so the action is ahead of you.
CAMERA SHAKE: ON
It's supposed to be an action game.

VIBRATION SETTINGS
___________________________________________
WIRELESS CONTROLLER VIBRATION: ON
TRIGGER EFFECT INTENSITY: HIGH

LANGUAGE SETTINGS
___________________________________________
TEXT LANGUAGE: ENGLISH (or whatever you prefer)
VOICE LANGUAGE: ENGLISH (or whatever you prefer. I played Ghost of Tsushima with Japanese voice language, but not necessary here.)

DISPLAY SETTINGS
___________________________________________
IMAGE QUALITY SETTINGS: PERFORMANCE-FOCUSED
If you don't have VRR then this option isn't up for debate, if you do have VRR then play around with what you think is best.
UI BRIGHTNESS (HDR): 0.7
The game is a bit washed out no matter what you do. Lowering the brightness does help, but choosing the right number for you will depend on your TV settings.
BRIGHTNESS: 0.8
Again, lowering the brightness helps.
GAMMA SETTINGS: 1.1
To off-set some of the lower brightness increase the gamma.
120 HZ DISPLAY MODE: OFF (ON if you have it)
MOTION BLUR: OFF
In Witcher 3 settings guide I said to keep it ON, but motion blur is game dependent and Forspoken is washed out by default. Having this OFF will actually make the game feel a bit clearer.
COLOR FILTER OPTIONS: OFF (Unless you're color blind)
FILTER STRENGTH: 1.0

WORLD SETTINGS
___________________________________________
AUTOMATIC ITEM GATHERING: ON
This is a big one in terms of having a go go go attitude. Not only can you bust through 6 flowers or 6 rocks and collect all the items without slowing down, but you'll also get the vast majority of item drops when killing enemies while in combat. When enemies die, those that drop items will be automatically picked up by you due to your proximity in melee combat, but not for those you're long-range killing. I'd still recommend pressing UP on the D-PAD to access the cuff compass to see if there's any remaining items you missed when fighting rarer enemies.
AUTOMATIC LOCK-PICKING: OFF (with caveat)
The game should tell you how many moves to solve, but it doesn't. Usually it's 3 moves max, but people who start randomly moving the pieces will take forever to solve without resetting the puzzle. If you're one of those people then turn it ON, otherwise keep it OFF.
ITEM VISIBILITY: ENHANCED VISIBILITY
This will make it so that plants, rocks, and chests will flash white. Since your goal is to bum rush over everything collectible as fast as possible flashing white is a good thing.
MAP ICON SIZE: STANDARD.
You could make it larger if you really had to, but larger is overly large IMO.
HIGHLIGHT NEARBY CHARACTERS: OFF
This will make it so that enemies and NPCs flash white. Too distracting in combat to have it ON and takes away from the gameplay seeing 50 enemies flashing at the same time.

BATTLE-SETTINGS
___________________________________________
SPELL-SWITCHING MENU DISPLAY: HOLD
If you're using SPELL-SWITCHING SLOWDOWN: DEFAULT (SLOW) in the DIFFICULTY SETTINGS, then keep this on HOLD. If you're using FULL STOP, then TRIGGER instead of HOLD felt better.
MAGIC PARKOUR SPRINTING: DEFAULT
LEAP/SOAR CONTROLS: DEFAULT
I did like having it set to AUTOMATIC, but at times I felt it wasn't doing exactly as I wanted it to do, particularly if you're looking to set up a grapple hook onto a brown crystal from an angle underneath it. So for free-flow purposes I recommend DEFAULT.
SPRINT BUTTON: N/A

CUFF SETTINGS
___________________________________________
CUFF COMPASS: ON
Use this after fights with rare enemies (Press UP on the D-PAD) so you can find rare loot you'd otherwise miss due to the white circle on the ground being so small. It has a large radius so it's also good to use in rubble buildings to see all the chests on all the floors.
CUFF COMPASS VISIBILITY: ON
CUFF CHAT FREQUENCY: LOW
You knew this was coming. LOW has them talking about once every 6-8 minutes, more than enough to remind you that they exist and that their relationship at this point in the demo is begrudgingly forced upon each other. OFF is overkill IMO.

MENU SETTINGS
___________________________________________
HUD SIZE: MEDIUM
I actually liked the HP bar on HIGH, but the waypoints are way too big on HIGH that it's not worth it. If you get hit more than I did maybe HIGH would be better to know when to heal, or you could just use the auto-heal setting.
HUD POSITION: DEFAULT
CORNER moves the HUD further along the fish bowl effect and the less you do that the better, so DEFAULT. If FLAT was an option I'd take that in a heartbeat.
BATTLE RANKING INFO. DISPLAY: BASIC
I'd even go so far as to turn it OFF once you're consistently getting STAR rating all the time. The way the rating works is that it's continuous in and out of fights. It doesn't end just because a fight ends like in Devil May Cry. It only goes down when you get hit hard enough, so if you don't get hit then no matter what you do you'll have a STAR rating. If you do get hit then don't get hit again and soon enough you'll be back to STAR rating. Either way what you do skill/speed-wise has no bearing on your rating. Once you know this seeing the rating on-screen is pointless.
SPELLCRAFT CHALENGE DISPLAY: ON
This appears briefly post-fight to remind you what you have to do to level up your spells, good to leave it ON since it's informative.
ATTACK HINT DISPLAY: ENHANCED VISIBILITY
Saved the best for last. This is what allows you to avoid getting hit. With this the red and blue attack icons by enemies will be so large you can't miss them. For example, if the enemy's head is 1 unit in length, the attack icons will be ~4 units in length, they're massive.
Hope you found this guide helpful.

Howdy all! I'm VashCowaii from the NAE-Adrinne server, and I've got a few resources I've been working on that I'd like to share with you guys in hopes of helping people make correct decisions in the future, as well as ending some really dumb arguments I hope to never see again on here. I made a video to cover everything I'm about to talk about which I strongly recommend viewing, for those who dislike reading bc there is a LOT we're gonna cover here, but otherwise we'll start as the title does:

1) An Analysis of iLvL and the Worth of Honing and Alts

All too often I see people ask, "Should I hone my alts from x to y" "where should I park" etc. and all too often replies are thrown out with no actual logic behind them. Nobody gives numbers to back up their baseless claims, nobody explains anything, and I kinda can't blame them since to my knowledge(and a lot of searching) literally nobody has actually given a detailed breakdown on the differences between each iLvL benchmark, so I made a breakdown to do just that ~ Sheet Link Here
What exactly am I looking at here, Vash?: This is a breakdown between each ilvl benchmark. A benchmark is considered any ilvl that unlocks a new activity, so in this case 1355 is a benchmark bc it unlocks a new chaos, and 1460 is a benchmark bc it unlocks a new guardian raid. This applies to any activity in the game.
The first 3 columns that output are for non-rested values, the next 3 are for rested values. The next cluster of columns repeats this setup, but for non-gold-earning characters instead. Of the 3 columns that output, the first shows the diff in gold between the ilvl on its row and the ilvl prior. The next column shows how much of a % gold gain that is over the prior total gold possible. The next shows how many weeks it'll take to recoup the cost of honing to that ilvl, with the diff in gold gained from honing there.
An Example: You'll see on the 1460 non-rested earner row there is a value of 3160. This means a 1460 earns 3160 more gold per week than a 1445 does, from raids, selling mats, etc. The next column shows 19.03%, this means that the gold gain of 3160 is an 19.03% gain over the prior total amount of gold possible for a 1445. The next column shows 7.03, this means it'll take 7.03 weeks of that extra 3160 gold, to recoup the cost of honing from 45 to 60. The next 3 columns are the exact same, with the diff of showing values if you rested your daily activities, whereas the first 3 columns are non-rested. The next cluster of columns shows for a non-gold earning character, but otherwise is the exact same.
In addition to being able to differentiate between rested and non-rested, gold-earning and non-gold-earning, you can also factor in bussing. A quick example of how that comes into play, lets just talk about Argos bussing. Argos bussing is usually around 1.2k/seat at the start of the week, and every character can 4man at 45, and most 1460's can duo argos so lets redo 1460. With bussing in play for argos alone, that changes the value from 3160 to 5560 more gold than a 1445(if that looks lower than it should be, just remember a 45 with bussing included gets 1200 from a 4man, so that's factored in) which is a 31.22% gold gain/week, which instead now takes 3.99 weeks to recoup the cost of honing to 60. Now obv you don't have to factor in bussing, but if you do you can input your own values for how much seats cost, and the calculations will adjust accordingly.
I hope that in the future when people are deciding whether they should hone a character up, or where to park a character, they can use this to make informed decisions based on their own playstyle and their own numbers, instead of blindly reciting whatever their favorite youtuber felt was good to say.
Lastly, this will be a recurring line on each point, but, go to the last bullet titled DATA for info on how this works, bc the data itself is a resource I want to provide to you guys, and I'll have explained my gathering methods. Better yet, watch the video.

2) An Actually Accurate/Usable Gold and Material Production Calculator

The title here says it all really. This accounts for EVERYTHING that happens to your roster in a week. Gold earner or not, rested or not, bussing or not, does weeklies or not, this calculator will show you your maximum gold/mats/silvegems etc. output, and/or less based on your inputs and character ilvl entered ~ Sheet Link Here
But what the hell does that even mean?: It factors in one-time weekly account/roster based income such as una's weekly gold(token shop), and challenge guardians, but also factors in just about everything possible under your characters. This factors for each character, individually, all of the following: Gold earning status, rest status, guild shop, pirate shop, chaos dungeons, guardian raids, boss rush(x1-2), cube(x1-3), una's dailies, raid gold based on earning status, raid chest purchases, raid bussing earnings, and so forth(be sure to scroll to the right on the calculator to see chest purchase and bussing input zones).
After you've given inputs for the criteria listed above, you can mark if you'll sell materials earned from the week and the regimen selected(rested or not, etc) and the sheet will show you the "selected" output side by side with your Maximum output so you can see what you stand to earn, and what your max would be if you did EVERYTHING possible for your roster on a given week. Additionally, it shows a breakdown on what makes up that maximum or "selected" value, and the differences between them so you can identify where you are missing gold generation.
An example: The video shows some examples, but with values on my personal version of the sheet, I have a maximum gold output listed as 209,293 gold/week, but a selected output of 93,250 gold. The discrepancy is listed in the breakdown beneath it, where it shows I'm missing 100,542 potential gold in the week from selling mats(among other areas, but we'll focus on mats for now). If I scroll down beneath the roster and check off any of the materials in any of the tiers I produce mats for, to indicate that I will sell them, then that number will decrease since gold will have gone to the selected output, bringing it closer to the max output.
You'll also see a Silver and a Gem output calculator, beneath and to the side of the gold numbers. The silver output is pretty self explanatory; the maximum is if you do unrested chaos, lopangs, and one x3 cube on each character that week. Selected is based on your inputs. Gems however have the added function of displaying how many gems are required for a given lvl that you choose(dropdown menu) and how many weeks it will take to achieve at maximum or selected outputs. So for my roster if I want a level 10 gem, that's 19,683 lvl 1 gems I need. I can produce 2842/week at max, and 2818.2 at selected. It will take me 6.93 weeks to make a level 10 gem at maximum production, but 6.98 at selected.
If you want to see your overall tier-based material generation, then go down below and you'll see 3 clusters of information. The first is titled Total Daily Materials, this I don't need to explain, but the materials shown are in a breakdown of tiers, so if you have a t1 character, their total daily mats will populate in the t1 row, they won't mix with t3. The next is Max Weekly Materials. This only shows the maximum possible materials based on chaos/guardians/shops, not with challenge weeklies. The last cluster is "Selected" and this will show material values based on inputs and boxes checked, as well as challenge weeklies so it has the potential to show higher than the max values bc of that, but only that.
If you want to see values specific to each character instead of each tier as the last paragraph mentioned, then each row a character is listed on will show two sets of values, the first set of columns will show daily output, and the second set of columns will show Selected output.
Lastly, this will be a recurring line on each point, but, go to the last bullet titled DATA for info on how this works, bc the data itself is a resource I want to provide to you guys, and I'll have explained my gathering methods. Better yet, watch the video.

3) Dynamic Roster & Activity Checklist

This sheet acts as a roster activity tracker for either yourself or all your friends as well. The only thing you need to do is enter in your characters and their ilvl, and all possible activities will populate for you to check off. So if you have a 1460 character then it'll populate kunga, argos, valtan hard, vykas hard etc, but if you change the char's ilvl to 75 then argos goes away, and clown is added. This wipes daily checks off at daily reset, weeklies at weekly, and calculates rest bonus daily so you don't have to log in to check.
For me personally this is used for coordinating raids since my friends and I can see what raids the other has left to do, and can hold/plan for what the others have or have not done.
I understand that some people/sites have already achieved something similar, this is just a custom made one I threw out for my friends and I a long while ago, and it has just been updated as time went on since other people/sites and their attempts really didn't achieve what we were after. I know some people have had similar complaints, so this supports up to 100 people in case people are that crazy.

4) Data - T3 Full Chaos Dungeon Analysis

This sheet includes all 330(30/chaos) tier 3 chaos dungeon samples(a sample is considered a set, so 660 individual runs) I have acquired over the last month, along with comparison tools and summary statistics for each chaos, including 2-sample T-Tests for the inevitable question, "are chaos dungeons the same"
The answer is: not even close, the only chaos that we can say is the same as another is 1385, which is the exact same as 1370, barring its distributions.
I'll skip the statistics overview here since if anyone actually understands what they'd mean, they can look at the sheet for values. The TLDR for the purpose here is to prove that categories(such as 1370-00 or 1400-75) are not indicators for how chaos earnings improve, nor do categories mean that all chaos within them are the same with no significant difference. I also hope that if another "blues bug" hoax circulates again, we can use the values gathered here in a paired test to disprove it quickly.
Data gathered excludes red/gold portal values, but it does include full dismantle, and does include end of mission bonuses. Thank you to Raxacoric(Vykas, 25 samples), Amythista(Adrinne, 15 Samples), Fonzie(Adrinne, 4 samples), Thegreatestwall(Adrinne, 2 samples), and HBIC(Adrinne guild, 2 samples) for your help in gathering.
I am quite sick as I throw this together, if anything doesn't make sense in the post or the video lemme know, bc I probably goofed in my explanation somewhere though I hope not, and I will do my best to clarify.

https://preview.redd.it/lqi4yj8qgk391.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=633b3f4333cef64835120e2a4e8a1cb1178d8071
Here you can ask questions/seek advice about Azur Lane, help each other and grow together!

Helpful Resources
Azur Lane Wiki
Azur Lane Official English Twitter
Azur Lane Community Discord Server
Azur Lane Official English Discord Server
English Community Tier List (PVE Tierlist, Newplayer guide, PvP fleets)
Nerezza's Gameplay Help Picture Guides (Gear Tierlist, Shops and Crafting priority)

Other Megathreads
Littorio's Luxurious Lounge - Gacha, Dorm Screenshots and Discussions

IMPORTANT REMINDER TO BIND YOUR ACCOUNT

JP players can bind via binding code or Twitter account; EN players can bind via Twitter account, Facebook account or Yostar account. These options are in Settings.

Use at least one account bind option; use multiple if you want to be safe. If your device is lost, damaged, or a game update breaks the app and forces you to reinstall you could permanently lose your account. EN accounts are easiest to recover with an account bind; make sure to bind your account in the settings and only use the login screen binding buttons to reconnect your account. Using the login screen buttons without a bound account will create a new account for you and effectively erase your progress with no way of recovering it outside of contacting customer support. JUST DO IT.
NOTE: It's also a good idea to remember your server and take a screenshot of your resume so that customer support has an easier time recovering your account.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I reroll? How do I do it?
No. There are a few reasons for this:

Names cannot be reused.
Ships are constructed with non-premium currency that you can easily get through gameplay.
SSR and UR ships are NOT required for progression.
High value ships are often built in time limited events, it is best to use your cubes on these banners instead of pulling for older ships from the regular gacha pool.
Unlike most gacha games Azur Lane doesn't shower a new player with resources, it instead continually gives you a steady flow of gacha resources.

How do I get more cubes?
Cubes are obtained through daily and weekly missions, monthly login rewards, random commissions, rewards for clearing story/event stages for the first time (does not apply to War Archive stages), Operation Siren star rewards, build packs, Shiranui's general shop for coins, the merit shop for PVP points, and in Akashi's shop for gems. Completing missions and logging in daily will get you a guaranteed 198 cubes per month (give or take a day), though 30 will be spent on light builds. You will likely gain more through commissions, but that is up to RNG.
Is X ship good?
Check out this tier list for a general indication of any ship's power. Keep in mind that most ships' usefulness stems from their skills, not necessarily just stats. Many ships are at their best only when you pair them with other ships that benefit from synergy between their skills.
All ships are usable with proper development and gear; just know that some ships/compositions are far less viable in later Worlds. Use the ships you like best till you hit that wall, then worry about optimization.
Should I be spamming Construction or saving cubes?
Saving cubes is crucial as you'll want a large stockpile of them to attempt limited constructions that appear during events. It takes a minimum of 400 cubes to guarantee pulling a UR ship from pity, though you will likely pull it before hitting that point. Outside of events, spend 1 cube per day on the light build pool to satisfy the daily build mission. The mission will refund you the cube and coins, essentially giving you a free pull.
I have all the current event's ships, should I pull some more to get duplicates for limit breaking?
Absolutely not. We have access to a steady supply of purple and gold bulins, you will be able to max limit break any ship given enough time. Pulling for duplicates just burns cubes you could be saving for the next event.
Should I keep duplicate ships?

Duplicates of ships you use: Keep for limit breaking and retrofitting.
Duplicates of ships you don't use, Rare or higher: Retire for Medals of Honor (in Build menu).
Duplicates of ships you don't use, Normal rarity: Consume for enhancement of used ships.
Even UR gacha dupes aren't worth keeping.
You cannot use duplicate ships in the same fleet, or a duplicate ship in any Operation Siren fleet.

I'm struggling on X stage, what should I do?

Level up and limit break your ships; Level advantage makes a huge difference.
Check your equipment; equip Purple/Gold/Rainbow rarity equipment and upgrade it. Check the listings for your ships on the tier list for suggestions on top tier gear to develop, or Nerezza's guide for details on other options if top tier gear is still out of reach.
Enhance your ship's stats with common rarity ships.
Assess the reason your fleets are losing. Different problems have different solutions! If your flagship is sinking, you may need better protection against suicide boats or planes. If your vanguard is sinking, you may need a tankier ship in the front, gear that boosts EVA or HP, or backline healers to keep them alive.

How should I set up my fleet?

Main Fleet (Backline)
Aircraft Carriers (CV, CVL) - Airstrikes clear the screen of enemy projectiles and weaker ships; Fighters can assist in shooting down enemy planes; Airspace Control Value (ACV) improves damage dealt by your carriers and reduces hostile encounters. Carriers are also hidden and protected from enemy heavy ships until detected, indicated by the red bar next to their face during sorties.
Battleships, Battlecruisers (BB, BC, BBV, BM) - Concentrated damage better suited for high-value targets; secondary gun protects backline from suicide ships.
Vanguard Fleet (Frontline)
Destroyers (DD, DDG) - Cheap; low gun damage with high-damage torpedoes; high evasion with poor armor and HP; speeds up your fleet and helps avoid ambushes.
Light Cruisers (CL) - Balanced stats with high anti-air capability.
Heavy Cruisers (CA, CB) - Expensive; high damage and/or large HP pool; some utility.

For the frontline position put your tankiest ship on the left and second tankiest on the right; for the backline try to have your strongest ship in the middle (flagship) position; battleships with a barrage skill should be in the center because it greatly improves their aim. If you're confident you can protect your backline, consider putting your lowest level ship in the flag position instead to benefit from the extra EXP flagships gain.
Make sure that your support (yellow) skills are useful to the rest of the fleet; most only affect certain class, nationality or weapon types and often don’t stack.
While at the beginning it doesn't matter - in fact you'd be better off using both of your fleets equally to level them up - your two fleets should eventually be split up into a mob-killer fleet and boss-killer fleet; the mob-killer fleet sacrifices firepower for sustain so use (self-)healing ships to survive the 4-7 fights needed to summon the boss for the boss-killer fleet.
When should I Limit Break?
This depends on your playstyle; Limit Breaking increases a ship's stats and capabilities at the price of increased Oil costs. Therefore:

If you lean towards casual play and don't sortie much, Limit Break as soon as possible.
If you lean towards hardcore play and sortie frequently, Limit Break only if you are struggling to progress, or if you intend to run the ship on an oil capped stage.

These guidelines only apply to your main use fleets; farming fleets may have a different approach as explained in the next question.
NOTE: Regardless of your playstyle, Limit Break when your ships are approaching level cap (70/80/90) to avoid losing XP.
What are good fleets to use for farming?
Farming fleets are typically not worth the effort since oil capped stages were introduced, encouraging the use of full fleets more often than not. All stages from world 9 in the main story onward are capped, as well as the D map for larger events. Only use these tips if you plan to run stages without oil caps, or are running low on oil.
Farming fleets are designed to clear stages with as little fuel use as possible. Therefore:

Use fewer ships. The minimum is one backline and one frontline ship (1:1). Over-level your ships as level difference matters.
Use ships with no/few limit breaks since LBs increase oil costs.
Use upgraded equipment and level up skills.
Complete the stage 10 times with stronger fleets after clearing it 100% to lower its threat level to safe.
Use ships of lower rarity since they're cheaper: Common (gray) > Rare (blue) > Elite (purple) > Super Rare (gold) > Ultra Rare (rainbow)
Use cheaper ship types. For the frontline: Destroyers (DD) > Light Cruisers (CL) > Heavy Cruisers (CA, CB). For the backline: Monitors (BM) > Battlecruisers (BC) > Battleships (BB) and Light Carriers (CVL) > standard Carriers (CV)

Popular vanguard ships: Phoenix, Leander, Cassin, Downes
Popular main fleet ships: Erebus, Terror, Nelson, Rodney, Duke of York, Yorktown
For high-level farming add healers (Unicorn Retrofit, Shouhou, Ryuuhou, Perseus) and a strong boss-killer fleet.
When farming for gear blueprints/ships/event points, is it better to full clear a stage or just clear enough mobs until the boss spawns?
Except when getting the third star on a map, you should always go for the boss as soon as it spawns. Only the boss fleet and event elites can drop SR gear blueprints, and the boss has a chance to drop two. Only boss fleets can drop SR ships/boss-only ships, and clearing the boss fleet with an S-rank guarantees a ship drop. Killing the boss fleet is what gives points (specialized cores, core data, event points, etc.); the amount of points is bound to the map, not to the amount of mobs killed.
What should I be equipping?
You can try following these guides. This tier list also suggests equipment for ships. Otherwise, use what you have.
How do I get more Oil?
Oil in Azur Lane is equivalent to stamina in most mobile games; your Canteen generates Oil and you can get more from mission/commission rewards. There is also a free pack available once per week in Akashi's shop that gives 4000 oil. If you run dry consider running less ships in your fleets, running ships with lower rarity/fewer limit breaks and taking a break.
How do I get Coins?
Aside from generation via the Merchant, large coin drops come from Daily Raids and the 8-10 hour commission (costs 800+ fuel).
Starting at chapter 9 of the main campaign stages have oil consumption cap that make your fleet only consume a specified amount of oil regardless of it's normal oil cost, making 3:3 fleets very cheap, chapter 9 and beyond also have big payout for beating a stage, detailed here. TL;DR higher stage = more money. This will be your main source of coins once you are capable of beating these stages.
What should I spend Gems on?
Priority list:

Dorm slots (max 5)
Dock capacity
2nd Floor Upgrade for Dorm
Promise Rings
Skins
3rd Tactical Classroom slot (depends on your needs)

Spending Gems on anything not listed here isn't recommended (ESPECIALLY Oil/Gold). However, it's mostly personal preference.
What should I spend Medals of Honor on?
Buy any of the month's featured SSR ships if you want them/need a duplicate for limit breaking. Medal exchange is the only place it is worth it to buy duplicates rather than Bulins when they're available. Otherwise, solid purchases are gold and purple Bulins (if needed), T3 Skillbooks, T2 Retrofit Blueprints (T3 if needed), PR Blueprints and Dorm food; anything else isn't recommended though your needs may vary.
What is the best use of Core Data?
Consult this shop guide for an idea of what's best to get from your core data.
Most of the ships currently in the core shop are obtainable through war archives and/or aren't useful to a new player. The only exception is Independence, which is currently only available in the core shop and quite good after her retrofit.
What are prototype cores, and how should I spend them?
Prototype cores are items that you can obtain from collecting daily guild supplies, or by analyzing extra PR blueprints or PR EXP data packs that you can no longer use. They can be exchanged for other PR blueprints and gear prints in the Prototype shop, which resets every month. The UR gear prints do not reset, and can only be purchased once. You can consult this shop guide to see what's worth buying.
Why can't I rank up past Captain in PVP?
For Rear Admiral Lower Half and higher in addition to meeting the rank score requirement you must be high enough on the player leaderboards to rank up. For Rear Admiral Lower Half that means you need to be in the top 1000; all ranks and thresholds can be found here.
When is the daily/weekly reset?
[EN] Daily reset is at midnight PDT; weekly reset is Sunday at midnight PDT.
How to get Akashi?
Tap on her 30 times in the shop menu to get started. And you might want to hold on to 10 purple and 5 gold Sakura tech packs.
How do I unlock the last few memories in X event?
After clearing B3/D3/the last of the non-EX stage of the event, try beating it a few more times.
How do I earn Tech Points?
Tech Points are gained by obtaining, max limit breaking and max levelling (level 120) ships. You do not get more points for leveling to 125. You can see how many points each ship will give you in the Lab > Fleet Tech tab. As a rule of thumb big ships such as CVs or BBs will give you more tech points than little ships regardless of rarity. MLBing a ship gives you the largest amount of points out of the 3 step process; PR1 ships requirements are generally easier to meet than PR2/PR3/PR4 ships' fleet tech thresholds.
How do I earn experience for research ships?
PR EXP is only earned through oil-consuming PvE content (& Operation Siren) with the ships specified under the EXP objectives in the Shipyard. PvP matches, Dorm EXP, Lecture EXP and commissions do not count. There are also data packs that can be obtained through beginner missions and the Cruise Pass that can be used to add EXP progress to a ship. These packs can be converted to prototype cores once you develop all ships in their series, so don't worry about wasting them. They're arguably more useful if you convert them instead.
The EXP goals are rather large; be prepared for a long grind. Ships who are at an EXP/level cap (i.e. 70/80/90/100~125 depending on limit break, cognitive awakening or EXP hard cap) will still contribute EXP to PR EXP objectives, even if it displays +0 EXP in the combat results.
How do High Efficiency Combat Logistics Plans work? Do they double experience earned for PR ships?
High Efficiency Plans double everything for one run of a stage. You'll earn double exp (which does double the amount earned for PR grinds), double coins, double event points, and even double the number of ships and blueprints. For prints and ships, the game will roll twice, so you won't just get two of whatever you rolled first. It's actually possible to get both Kaga and Akagi from a single run of 3-4 for example, though the chances of that are still super low.
The trade off is the run will cost you double. You'll pay twice as much oil, as well as reducing your ships' morale twice as fast. It essentially acts as if you ran the stage twice in the time it took to run it once. Because of this, this item is a time saver, nothing more. If you don't have a lot of time to grind, this cuts the time you need in half. Otherwise, normal grinding works just as well.
One exception is the war archives. You will get double the rewards but only use one data key per stage clear, so it is highly recommended to use these if you'll be farming the archives.
What types of researches are best?
Here is the list for the best researches for earning PR blueprints. There is also a list for those who are looking to grind gear blueprints specifically. Note that PR ships are an endgame goal; investing cubes and coins into research projects early on will greatly impede your progress with little benefit so free researches are a better option while starting out.
Which PR Series/Catch Up should I choose in the research lab?
Series 1 should not be run, as you can spend coins in place of blueprints for series 1 ships, and all its best gear can be produced in the gear lab.
Series 2 should only be run for DR prints for FDG and Azuma, as they can't be upgraded with coins. There is also good gear in this series, such as a UR AP gun for battleships that is still best in slot.
Series 3 and 4 both have good gear, and their ships cannot be upgraded with coins. One of these would be a good series to run in general, but should be chosen based off of which ships you expect to actually use first.
Catch ups give you 300 bonus prints awarded after every research which you can split between the different PR ships in each series. For example, if you earn 100 prints for Cheshire, you have 200 left you can use on the other series 3 ships. An exception to this are the DR ships, which have their own personal catch up to guarantee you get 150 prints for each one. It's advised to use this mechanic to speed along development of ships you actually plan to use, but how many prints you devote to each ship is up to you.
What is the drop rate of X ship, gear, etc?
The only known drop rate is for Akagi & Kaga, each have a 0.75% chance to drop after defeating the boss of 3-4. No other drop rates are currently known.
I'm trying to 3 star a hard mode campaign map but the mobs have stopped spawning.
Turn off the clearing mode option that you can find in the window before the map starts up.
Is X getting a rerun?
Most major events get a single rerun per region. You can check the Azur Lane Wiki to see if an event has already reran on your server's region. Reruns generally occur at least a year after the event's first debut; after the rerun is concluded ships from that event will slowly come to permanent construction pools. The exception to this rule are collaboration events which - so far - haven't seen any reruns due to licensing deals.
How do I get retrofit items for Sandy/Warspite/X?
UR retrofit item are acquired through limited-time events. They will have reruns, if you missed them you will have a chance to obtain them in the future. After having a rerun these items are permanently added to the prototype shop.
Why can't I claim the special cores from my weekly missions?
We're limited to 4000 special cores per month. If you're getting a warning while trying to claim your weekly rewards, you are close to or at that 4000 limit. You can still collect the other rewards after acknowledging the warning, or if the week overlaps into the next month you may choose to wait to collect them till the core limit has been reset.
What is the next big event? Is there an event roadmap?
There is no known roadmap for any of the regions, however larger events do usually take place during the celebrations for the CN, EN, and JP server's anniversaries. Big events are usually announced a week or two at most before the event itself is released.

Helpful Resources
Azur Lane Wiki
Azur Lane Official English Twitter
Azur Lane Community Discord Server
Azur Lane Official English Discord Server
English Community Tier List (PVE Tierlist, Newplayer guide, PvP fleets)
Nerezza's Gameplay Help Picture Guides (Gear Tierlist, Shops and Crafting priority)

Other Megathreads
Littorio's Luxurious Lounge - Gacha, Dorm Screenshots and Discussions

IMPORTANT REMINDER TO BIND YOUR ACCOUNT

JP players can bind via binding code or Twitter account; EN players can bind via Twitter account, Facebook account or Yostar account. These options are in Settings.

Names cannot be reused.
Ships are constructed with non-premium currency that you can easily get through gameplay.
SSR and UR ships are NOT required for progression.
High value ships are often built in time limited events, it is best to use your cubes on these banners instead of pulling for older ships from the regular gacha pool.
Unlike most gacha games Azur Lane doesn't shower a new player with resources, it instead continually gives you a steady flow of gacha resources.

Duplicates of ships you use: Keep for limit breaking and retrofitting.
Duplicates of ships you don't use, Rare or higher: Retire for Medals of Honor (in Build menu).
Duplicates of ships you don't use, Normal rarity: Consume for enhancement of used ships.
Even UR gacha dupes aren't worth keeping.
You cannot use duplicate ships in the same fleet, or a duplicate ship in any Operation Siren fleet.

I'm struggling on X stage, what should I do?

Level up and limit break your ships; Level advantage makes a huge difference.
Check your equipment; equip Purple/Gold/Rainbow rarity equipment and upgrade it. Check the listings for your ships on the tier list for suggestions on top tier gear to develop, or Nerezza's guide for details on other options if top tier gear is still out of reach.
Enhance your ship's stats with common rarity ships.
Assess the reason your fleets are losing. Different problems have different solutions! If your flagship is sinking, you may need better protection against suicide boats or planes. If your vanguard is sinking, you may need a tankier ship in the front, gear that boosts EVA or HP, or backline healers to keep them alive.

How should I set up my fleet?

Main Fleet (Backline)
Aircraft Carriers (CV, CVL) - Airstrikes clear the screen of enemy projectiles and weaker ships; Fighters can assist in shooting down enemy planes; Airspace Control Value (ACV) improves damage dealt by your carriers and reduces hostile encounters. Carriers are also hidden and protected from enemy heavy ships until detected, indicated by the red bar next to their face during sorties.
Battleships, Battlecruisers (BB, BC, BBV, BM) - Concentrated damage better suited for high-value targets; secondary gun protects backline from suicide ships.
Vanguard Fleet (Frontline)
Destroyers (DD, DDG) - Cheap; low gun damage with high-damage torpedoes; high evasion with poor armor and HP; speeds up your fleet and helps avoid ambushes.
Light Cruisers (CL) - Balanced stats with high anti-air capability.
Heavy Cruisers (CA, CB) - Expensive; high damage and/or large HP pool; some utility.

If you lean towards casual play and don't sortie much, Limit Break as soon as possible.
If you lean towards hardcore play and sortie frequently, Limit Break only if you are struggling to progress, or if you intend to run the ship on an oil capped stage.

Use fewer ships. The minimum is one backline and one frontline ship (1:1). Over-level your ships as level difference matters.
Use ships with no/few limit breaks since LBs increase oil costs.
Use upgraded equipment and level up skills.
Complete the stage 10 times with stronger fleets after clearing it 100% to lower its threat level to safe.
Use ships of lower rarity since they're cheaper: Common (gray) > Rare (blue) > Elite (purple) > Super Rare (gold) > Ultra Rare (rainbow)
Use cheaper ship types. For the frontline: Destroyers (DD) > Light Cruisers (CL) > Heavy Cruisers (CA, CB). For the backline: Monitors (BM) > Battlecruisers (BC) > Battleships (BB) and Light Carriers (CVL) > standard Carriers (CV)

Dorm slots (max 5)
Dock capacity
2nd Floor Upgrade for Dorm
Promise Rings
Skins
3rd Tactical Classroom slot (depends on your needs)

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Theory about the UI. I believe Down on the D-pad is obviously the Pokedex, Up is the menu where you can isnpect your team, items and player info. Left and Right on the D-pad circles through the items/Pokemon and X changes from Pokemon to Items and back. Minus may be for calling mounts, but IDK

Theory about the UI. I believe Down on the D-pad is obviously the Pokedex, Up is the menu where you can isnpect your team, items and player info. Left and Right on the D-pad circles through the items/Pokemon and X changes from Pokemon to Items and back. Minus may be for calling mounts, but IDK

EoD info dump from today showing some of the Menu UI and some of the R-18 content.

Parco dello Stelvio, scoperta una pianta rarissima ritenuta estinta in Trentino

Bitcoin Price Analysis: BTC/USD miles off cryptocurrency panel $8... #cryptocurrency #bitcoin #eth forex… https://t.co/p1hv4SoqqD - Crypto Insider Info - Whales's

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This Week at Bungie - 12/01/2022

We’ll Meet Again, Guardian, In An Altaïr-net Universe

A Fine Evening of Iron Banana and Trials of Osiris with a Splash of Nightfall

Weapon Philosophy and the Art of "Running Div"

Global

Weapon Archetypes

Sidearm

Fusion Rifle

Glaive

Hand Cannon

Perks

Enhanced Perks

Exotics

A Void Hunter Walks into a Bar, but You Probably Didn’t See Them

Season 19 Artifact Mods: Here for a Good Time Not a Long Time

Community-Created, Community-Voted | Choose Your Arbalest

We're Prime'd and Ready for More Loot

Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 34.0

Bloons TD 6 v34.0 - Update Notes!

COMING SOON - Update 34!

Key New Features

New Awesome

What’s Not Here - Yet!

Game Changes / Additions

Bug Fixes & General Changes

Platform Specific fixes

Balance Changes

Looking Forward

[MEGATHREAD] List of bugs, issues, missing content & most requested changes

If you're reporting an issue, please look if it's already here - most messages and comments I get report issues that are already here.

Can we all agree people like this ruin the game?

Forspoken Demo - A Complete Settings Guide For A Better Experience

An Analysis of iLvL and the Worth of Honing and Alts -- An actually accurate/usable gold & mats production calc -- & More

1) An Analysis of iLvL and the Worth of Honing and Alts

2) An Actually Accurate/Usable Gold and Material Production Calculator

3) Dynamic Roster & Activity Checklist

4) Data - T3 Full Chaos Dungeon Analysis

Amazon's Study Hall - Daily Questions Megathread (12/08)

** IMPORTANT REMINDER TO BIND YOUR ACCOUNT **

JP players can bind via binding code or Twitter account; EN players can bind via Twitter account, Facebook account or Yostar account. These options are in Settings.

Amazon's Study Hall - Daily Questions Megathread (12/12)

** IMPORTANT REMINDER TO BIND YOUR ACCOUNT **

JP players can bind via binding code or Twitter account; EN players can bind via Twitter account, Facebook account or Yostar account. These options are in Settings.

IMPORTANT REMINDER TO BIND YOUR ACCOUNT

IMPORTANT REMINDER TO BIND YOUR ACCOUNT