So, you know, I'm supposed to be updating the Encyclopedia about now. Or making my Light Tower plans. But this idea has been in my head for the last few days, so fuck it, let's make this thread instead of being productive!
Now, I'm not going to say that what I write here is objective. This is what the game has been like for the first 2.5 years in my eyes. You know what they say, "opinions are like assholes - everyone has one." Don't agree with something? Cool. Post your thoughts on the matter.
Now then, I'm going to split this post into multitudes of "eras", which overlap with each other. Because Kamihime can be a surprisingly complex game and there quite a few layers to it.
From a gameplay perspective
The Era of Sol, from launch (Feb 2017) to roughly June 2018?
So here is the thing about early Kamihime content. Bosses could only attack or do a special attack during their turn, but the latter was very rare. I can only think of (fucking) Medusa (April 2017). And (fucking) Medusa probably put the devs off from such behavior that we didn't see all that much of it.
So, this means that the only things that you really had to in Kamihime was Overdrive control. Bosses had normal Overdrives and Rage Overdrives, and that was it. That, by itself, made the game quite complex. Like we had bosses whose Overdrives were nothing special but Combo attacked a lot, and we had bosses like Python which has massive amounts of Orbs and whose Rage Overdrive WOULD kill you - so you had to pace yourself to NOT Rage her before Overdrive and kill her before the second Overdrive. Cool. But, we can really simplify what boss Overdrives did into three things:
1. The boss would deal damage.
2. The boss would buff itself (like Rahab).
3. The boss would debuff your team.
The thing is... Sol handled ALL of that. Lost HP? Sol could heal you. Boss would buff itself and threaten to one-shot you? Sol could Dispel that. Boss debuffs your Def? Or debuffs you with Doom (hi Dullahan!)? Sol can Cleanse that. If you had trouble with ANY content, you could just splash an off-element Sol into there, and bam. Problems be gone. It also didn't help that until January 2018, there no was no cap on Atk debuff. Sol would allow you to reach -60% Atk - sometimes even -70% with Jormungand! - cutting the amount of damage you take by a stupid margin. Remember, going from -40% to -70% means taking HALF damage from what you take at -40%, so more powerful than a Joan would be if she had 1 turn CD on her Damage Cut!!! And, it was technically possible to reach above -100% Atk with some meme builds... which would result on enemies HEALING you when attacking you. Yeah, that was a thing. Really.
Now, these days, the idea of bringing an off-element Hime is cringeworthy. But, you have to remember that back then, teams weren't highly synergistic. You had a few good Hime per element in the entire game, and if you had them, cool. But with the limited power levels per Hime back then and the limited pool of Hime, dropping your worst one for Sol was not a problem at all. However, as the Hime pool increased, synergy levels inside teams surged and combined with Hime powercreep, that slowly started to become a problem. Yet, that progress wasn't so fast to end Sol's Era. What did end it... was Triggers. I don't remember was Ult Water (June 2018) the first Trigger boss in the game, it could've also been Tiamat (April 2018) or Amaru (May 2018). I'm too lazy to check the Kitty threads of these events. But either way, this ushered Kamihime into:
The Era of Trigger bosses, from roughly June 2018 to probably forever
At the very least, Ult Water was one of the first Trigger bosses. Triggers enable bosses to do anything at any time, vastly expanding the horizons for how content works. In addition to the same variety in Overdrives, bosses can now get really pissed off if you debuff them, or do a special thing when they Rage, or do a special thing when they go low HP, or do a special thing when you use an ability of a specific color... or all of the above at the same time, if the devs really want to fuck with you.
Honestly? As long as it is not overdone (like at Ult Water), it's great. It keeps the content fresh as long as the devs bother to be creative with the boss abilities. The only problem is lack of communication. Like the current raid event boss Hoder basically ENDS YOU if you use any buffing abilities (yellow). But not many people even know that... because the game doesn't tell you WHY the Trigger happened! You either have to read it up in Kitty's thread or go to DMM wiki and hope that Google translate makes any kind of fucking sense out of the moonrunes. And that honestly sucks. But I don't think that any change is coming for that, so we'll just have to make do.
From a buff/debuff perspective
Early on, buffs were pathetic. I mean, if we look at the launch Hime, you have stuff like Shiva who gives +20% Assault to your team for 3/5 turns, OR Satan who gives -15% Def with 7/7 turns uptime. To make matters worse, Shiva's buff is Assault, which you can get from your Grid - ten SR weapons would get you to 130%. At this point, Shiva's buff gives you... 8% more damage output. And considering uptime, it's basically a 5% damage increase - and only gets worse as you get SSR weapons. Meanwhile, Satan is at least 15% more damage and if you're also running -20% B, it's 18% more damage. That's almost FOUR TIMES BETTER. And I'm being nice here and comparing Shiva to Satan rather than SSR Amon with her -25%! The point is, buffs in general were all like this - budgeted to fucking shit. They were simply not really part of the equation for a long, long, looooong time in Kamihime's perspective and thus you won't see me talking about them until the very end of this section.
The Era of -40% Def, from launch (Feb 2017) to Feb 2018
Despite debuffs being THE thing, Early on Kamihime simply didn't have very many debuffs available to you. Really, Souls were your best source for them thanks to Gawain's Ambush (-20% A) and Dartagnan's Sniper Shot (-20% B). Sure, there were SOME sources of reaching -50% such as Cthulhu (April 2017), Wrath Bow burst effect (November 2017) and SSR Tsukuyomi (December 2017), they were few and limited to specific Hime that you probably didn't have. And in the case of SSR Tsukuyomi, even limited to a single element!
But, one thing snuck into the game's Exchange Store without anyone noticing. And this post by some unregistered person changed everything.
Side note: You can read my initial reaction to it on the next page, post 2920. Ah yes, history gold right there!
The Era of Vine, from Feb 2018 to June 2018
Want to reach -50% Def? Don't worry baby, Vine is here to save the day. She came into the game with the addition of the Dark storyline (which remains the final storyline to this day even on DMM I believe), but nobody noticed. Since all the previous SR Eidolons from the storyline were shit. But Vine? This baby had -10% Def Eidolon/weapon frame and a hitrate to back it up! NEVER missing with VoF up and almost never even without. And even available to EVERYONE! Sure, the base stats were sorely lacking, but going from -40% to -50% Def was a whopping 16% increase. And that makes all the difference.
In addition to more Hime who can help reach that elusive -50% were coming out (such as Mars (March 2018), Thanatos (April 2018) and Mammon (June 2018)) - they might not have the same availability like Vine did, but they were there - but what ended Vine's era was Herc's Axe (combined with Herc buffs that turned her into a beast), and by June 2018 not all Ults were even out yet. So honestly, I'm cutting this era short by quite a lot. In reality, it was a lot longer.
Regardless, the game moved on to:
The Era of -50%, from June 2018 to forever?
Hercules with her Soul weapon finally gave everyone relatively easy access to -50% Def. All you need is 120 Regalia and you can have -25% Def. Back then you could trade 20 Regalia per month from Fragments, so even newbies could gain 127 Regalia per month by hosting and being carried by a Union mate (30*3 Regalia from Host bonus = 90, 30*9 Fragments from Vice MVP = 270 Fragments, translates into 100 for 5 each = 20 and 170 for 10 each = 17, so 90+20+17 per month = 127!). And a mere month is NOT a long time in Kamihime.
Since Herc's Axe was -25% and Vine was -10%, and both being the same frame, Vine was starting to become obsolete. Rest in piece, buddy. You did good, you did really good.
And ever since, you should basically always run -50% Def teams. All you need is Hercules and one or two Hime. Sure there are exceptions, like MVP hunting raid teams, but.
And then finally... let's have a side note about buffs.
As time progresses, there has been some serious power creep with Hime. Now, sure, debuffs have gained SOME powercreep as well. There are multiple -30% Def Hime now, but ALL of them are for their own element only. But more important, buffs have been gaining some serious fucking shit lately. For example, my Shiva example up above? Shiva's Awakening recently buffed her to +30% Assault +20% Elemental +Crit (like 25% chance of +25% damage or something). Sure that's still 3/5 uptime, but that's still wayyyy more in line with debuffs now. In addition, one thing I've noticed is that buffs from Bursting are a thing now, and these are budgeted wayyyy wrong. For example, Cu Awakened gets a +45%ish Triple buff for 3 turns after Burst. And each Triple attack gives her 10% Special for 10 turns. Fast Wind teams can Burst every 3-4 turns I'd say, which kinda makes... Cu absolutely insane! And she's not the only one. Honestly, Burst effects are basically budgeted as if the game was still about needing 8 turns per Full Burst, but even Tiara Set Bonus has made that a thing of ancient history.
In the future, I'm pretty sure that the game will keep powercreeping buffs. And most importantly, keep introducing extremely powerful Burst buffs. Maybe if I were to remake this post around the 3.5 years marker (where DMM is today), I'd need to cut off the "Era of -50%" into "Era of buffs" at some point. For now though, I don't see a reason for it.
From a Soul perspective
The Era of Harmony, from launch (Feb 2017) to June 2018
In a gacha game that wants to be serious, how do you ensure that players have at least basic tools on their hands? Like buffs, or debuffs, or heals, or damage cuts, or... any tools, really? When you can't rely on players have any specific Hime, yet you want to give them CHOICES and OPTIONS so that they can actually PLAY the game (I'm looking at you, Otogi)? In other words, let's talk about Souls - the one thing that probably hooked me into Kamihime.
As I mentioned previously, debuffs were the name of the game and Souls were your primary source of them. Sure, if you had the perfect team, you probably didn't need them for those. But let's face it, most people didn't have perfect teams back then and still don't today!
And thus, the most likely Souls to be run were Gawain (yes, T2 Soul!) with Sniper Shot, or Dartagnan with Ambush. Both of whom would reach -40% Def by themselves. If you had a Hime with a strong A or B debuff, you could run... well, basically anyone and compliment that one with Ambush or Sniper Shot. Mordred was a popular choice due to having BP and also VoF, but Joan saw plenty of use as well. Hell, there was even a (short) time period where people would run (Gilgamesh/)Siegfried and try snipe MVP in event Raids by slamming a big one during Stun. Cassiopeia also saw plenty of use thanks to her Dispel, while Andromeda wasn't used all that much - why run her when you can run Cass with Dispel AND a debuff? Really, the only Soul tree that didn't any use was Solomon, due to being a piece of useless shit.
Morgan was added in November 2017, and didn't see much use. Hell, Morgan only sees use today in some Berserk meme builds, which can be powerful but require her Soul weapon and a proper team to support it. Hercules was Added to Nutaku in December 2017, and was a useless piece of garbage - with her weak self-buffs with 3/7 turn uptimes and her weak nuke (if I remember right), she was literally only there for you to get some Master bonuses from. Shingen entered the fray in January 2018 and was instantly a big hit. Provisional Forest was a huge game changer and allowed for some serious spike damage. But, Shingen couldn't reliably use this ability on her own - she needed help from the team. +5 burst was all that was required and Shingen could safely Burst along with the team. This limitation meant that Shingen didn't entirely overtake the meta, and there was a still wide range of different Souls being used in the game.
This is what I mean by "Era of Harmony" - with the few exceptions of useless pieces of shit like Solomon and Hercules, all Soul trees were seeing use. Sure, Siegs were rare and Morgan's niche was extremely small, but even without them that's still 6/10 Soul trees in use. Things started to change in March 2018 with the introduction of Soul weapons. Gawain was the first victim, since right off the bat Dartagnan with Ambush could now provide -50% Def just by herself! Sure it was a HP weapon, but that was still serious shit at the time. What truly ended the Era of Harmony however... was Hercules' Soul weapon.
The Era of Hercules and Shingen, from June 2018 to August 2020?
Some time before this (past Slashley, why the fuck did you not write that exact date down?), Herc got some serious reworking. Her buffs were increased by a ton and their uptime was increased to 5/7 turns. And I think her now iconic nuke was notably buffed as well, though I forget did they increase the damage cap or scaling per buff (past Slashley, why the fuck did you not write that shit down?) or... well, whatever. This alone made her perfectly viable and she joined the Age of Harmony for a short time, but what broke the camel's back... was her Axe. Now, before this, all Soul weapons basically followed a simple rule: HP weapons have good effects, but offensive weapons are generally better despite having a shitty effect. Hercules however... got it the other way around. Her GOOD ability was in the OFFENSIVE weapon. AND there was that mother. Fucking. -25% Fucking. Def. Debuff. On that fucking thing as well. So let's have a look at this:
1. Massive buffs to her abilities.
2. Offensive Soul weapon has good ability.
3. Extremely strong Def debuff on Burst.
Now, if you were a sensible game developer, you'd go "Hmm... pick one!"
Any single one of these would've been enough to bring Hercules to the Era of Harmony, but no, they went and gave Hercules ALL FUCKING THREE. As such, Hercules very quickly ended the one Era and just replaced everything. It was now Hercules, Hercules, Hercules. Hell, there wasn't any reason to run Shingen anymore, since Herc's Axe allowed her to use PF without any help from the team! AND still providing a motherfucking Debuff thanks to her Axe!
In August 2018, Shingen and Morgan got their Soul weapons, and they also got their offensive Soul weapons to be the better ability. Morgan became much more viable, but sadly, the Era of Harmony was long over and she had no chance to compete with Hercules. Shingen, however, now no longer needed the help of her team to make use out of PF. This meant that Shingen started to show up a bit, generally being more team focused and having a EX slot free while still bringing PF.
February 2019 brought forth some serious changes, with the MP system. Souls could now be upgraded. The winners of this change? Solomon! She was now actually good and would certainly have joined the fray if the Era of Harmony was still a thing, but it was far too late for that. So she continues to be reduced to being just a Tower slave, something she was already doing since the first Tower event in December 2018. The second winner? Shingen. Thanks to Encourage Inspiration, Shingen's EX slot could now hold an extremely powerful boost to the team rather than a debuff. This DOES mean that the team has to provide the -50% Def debuffs entirely. But as this is already 2019, the options for that from Hime have increased drastically - even some SR Hime had C frames or Elem Res- buffs at this point.
So, the point where we are currently? It's just Hercules for basically everyone, and the very perfected teams use Shingen who has higher potential, IF your team can support her. Which I think is dumb. Age of Harmony was just much more interesting than "Oh, Hercules goes into EVERY TEAM LUL!!1"
Anyway, T4 Souls are coming up later. All of them are really powerful, but thanks to their extreme cost, from the first batch you only want T4 Solomon. Second batch is coming August 2020-ish, containing T4 Hercules and especially T4 Shingen who are ludicrously strong and will most likely utterly dominate the meta... ... IF you can afford them. Good luck with that! The requirements for that shit is really, really, REALLY DUMB!
.
From a Events perspective
I... don't actually have much to say about this. This has been kinda covered already by the Sol section. Just to recap:
The game started with Advents, then soon came up with Raids. Then re-printed Advents a lot (especially on Nutaku, since they needed to get the game in sync with the DMM release so that we wouldn't get x-mas events in November). The first Union event happened in July 2017, and the first Union event with actual rewards in it happened in September 2017. Until October 2017 you needed to find one SSR weapon and one SSR Eidolon from Raid Gacha Tickets, which SUCKED. April 2018 saw a giant nerf to Raid requirements, making them WAY less grindy than before. June 2018 saw a giant nerf to Advent requirements, making them WAYYYY less grindy. Bi-monthly Tower events started December 2018. Skill Checker-kun events started to roll in August 2019. In the future, guessing dates: Final Union Demon event in December 2019, first Angel Union event (warning! Shitty rewards!) and first Labyrinth event in January 2020 (warning! The first one will be GRINDYYYYY!).
December 2017 brought forth the first "permanent event", Accessory Quests. March 2018 brought the first of Ultimate Disaster (then called "Ragnarok" thanks to some serious short-sightedness from the devs). Guild Orders started to run in August 2018. AQ5 came in December 2018. April 2019 brought the first real Ragnarok Disasters. More permanent events are coming up, to name a few with guesses to their implementation: first Olympia raids and AQ6 October 2019, Epic Quests (old Raid events) in November 2019, AQ7 in December 2019.
From a Grid perspective
The Era of 16%, from launch (Feb 2017) to November 2017
SSR Weapons basically either had 16% HP (and were useless) or 16% Assault. Simple, but boring and really shitty if you had like two months of events with HP weapons in a row. Yes, that fucking happened. No, nobody was happy.
And yes, Prides were added into the game somewhere in there, but they're effectively Assault weapons, so no need to mention specifics.
The goal at this point was to have 10x SSR Assault weapons in your Grid, so 160% Assault. Not that anyone but omega whales reached that.
The Era of 23%, from November 2017 to June 2018
Sphinx brought the first dual-skill weapon to everyone, paving way to the glorious era of dual-skill weapons with her 13% Assault AND 10% HP weapon. Wow! I believe there HAD been some dual-skills before - as Hime release weapons. But since those weren't available to all, it wasn't such a hallmark.
The goal at this point was to have 10x SSR Assault/HP weapons in your Grid, so 130% Assault and 100% HP. Not that anyone but omega whales reached that.
The Era of "what the fuck is this shit?", from June 2018 to September 2018
At this point, Illuyankas introduced to us lots of new things that can be in our weapons - not just Assault or Pride or HP, but also wonderful things like Elaborate - the one thing worse than a fucking full HP weapon! The devs had realized that if they kept giving us good weapons, things would soon get pretty stale. So, it was time to dilute the pool with garbage!
The goal at this point was still to have 9x SSR Assault/HP weapons in your Grid, so 117% Assault and 90% HP, and one Soul weapon. Not that anyone but omega whales reached that.
Well, it wasn't ALL bad news. Exceed also came out of this, increasing Burst damage cap from 1m to 2m... ... if you could somehow get your hands on those weapons. Which you didn't. Until...
The Era of FLBs, from September 2018 to forever?
Phoenix reprint introduced FLBs to us, increasing the goal to 21% Assault and 15% HP per weapon. And more importantly... Union events now started to give Exceed weapons. And they no longer will after Angel Union events start, because the devs realized that they were giving out too much good shit. So if you didn't play the game when the Demon Union events ran with Exceed weapons, GET FUCKED SON.
So the ultimate goal now was 9x FLB Assault/HP/Exceed weapons, and one Soul weapon. Thus 189% Assault and 90-120% HP, with 1-3 Exceeds. This certainly isn't the ultimate, ULTIMATE goal since there are fun stuff like triple skill weapons too, or double Assault weapons. These are pretty much Hime exclusive weapons, but thanks to Tower events, bricks can be used. In short, there is way, WAY more variation in Grids now, which is good.
And finally, as a subnote (because they DON'T deserve any better!) are Phantom weapons which you could get - at a very low chance - since April 2019. So the ultimate, ULTIMATE goal is to have a 8x FLB Assault/HP/Exceed weapons of Lance/Hammer/Glaive/Bow type, all of them being triple skills or at least double Assault. And then one Phantom weapon of that type and one Soul weapon. Good luck with that, buddy.
What does the future hold?
Honestly, we're reaching a point in Kamihime where the DMM devs clearly cut back on production values. We have been getting and are going to be getting a lot more "continuous content" like AQs and GOs which we need to farm ad-infinitum, rather than weekly events. Those will still roll around, though, at a slightly slower pace it seems. Also, expect way more Limited Edition Hime, as the majority of the upcoming Hime are just new versions of the Hime we already have. Between now and January 2020 - including the current Fire Frey - there are 11 SSR Hime coming up. Out of which SEVEN are Limited. SIX are new versions of already existing Hime. And did I mention that soon, we won't have new Hime whenever a new event starts? Yeah, those are being toned down to every 1st and 15th of each month. No more, no less.
With less new Hime designs and less Hime in general, production values have clearly been cut. Which is worrisome. Fear not though, I'm sure that all of those new Hime will be OP as fuck. Oh wait, since in Nutaku we don't get new Hime with Jewels, I guess that's a reason to fear. After all, in the upcoming year, all the upgrades that we have coming are Olympia raids (providing us with a pretty strong new main Eidolon for all elements, assuming you don't have a P2W Eidolon for that element) and T4 Souls. That is if you can afford those T4 Souls, because FUCK YOU.
So yeah. The future of Kamihime does worry me. If you look at the Grid section, you'll notice that slowly but surely Grids made players more and more powerful over the past 2.5 years - veterans are now reaching full event FLB Grids across the board (except Fire, because fuck Fire). However, the main source of new power from now on - the new Hime - are effectively cut off from us in Nutaku. That's... not good.
It also doesn't help how Kamihime has a serious issue with new blood. Seriously, the game HINGES on you either having played for two years now, OR having to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a proper Grid. That does NOT invite new people into the game. There seriously NEEDS to be some SERIOUS catch-up mechanics, and although DMM has implemented some over the past year (our upcoming year, such as Epic Quests) they simply are NOT anywhere near enough.
So yeah. That's my take of the last 2.5 years. Honestly? I could've written a lot more. Like, I didn't even touch Gacha changes, or how Miracle Tickets changed the game. I wonder what else did I not mention?
And if you've actually read all of that... well, good job? All purchases are final, no refunds.