Congralations to the CN streamers for completing their 20 winstreak challenge no resets using only Trial characters!

Source: 甘泽 bilibili post

Final game: Absolute Cinema

For the initial rules, refer to my previous post.

Comps played, SSS unless indicated:

1. SH Contract Himeko.N into Firefly
2. Blazing Prairie FuA Acheron
3. FTL Promotion Yaoguang
4. DoT Contract DoT Emblem Black Swan
5. Furbo's Morning Wolf Hunt
6. Holy Grail Archer into FuA Rin
7. Efficient Decision Boothill (lv 5 Boothill)
8. Ace in the Hole FuA Archer into 3 star Cyrene
9. Yanqing into Archer (B)
10. Prismatic Future Herta Era
11. Debuff +2 I am Luocha (no Anti Grav Propellor)
12. DHIL (early Seele and 4 Staff Projectors)
13. 3 star Aglaea (no Day Demigod) into Topaz
14. Shield Himeko.N
15. Dr. Ratio
16. Avalon Himeko.N into Welt
17. War Frontier Sparxie (S)
18. Seele
19. Yanqing 3 star
20. 3 star Aglaea

Games >! 07 !<>!11 !<and >!20!< also were able to get 3 star Cyrene, however it was only necessary in game >!20!< for the SSS.

vods playlists (may not be fully updated at the time of posting):

甘泽: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1wNu26fEYX/

地下: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1q7uq6ZES8/

Phainon is the best abuser of Himeko's Quake damage, this is easily 3x more OP than any previous version of Phainon. Bastion Projector Mortenax Blade shields so much while also providing insanely good buffs.

https://preview.redd.it/ghefha76vodh1.png?width=1896&format=png&auto=webp&s=9aeea7914e15688b9c1551ecbbec24646cb4b966

Just remember to avoid Traffic Lights.

https://preview.redd.it/r9bxqi21wodh1.png?width=1714&format=png&auto=webp&s=4de62403017dee2ea088867ad4e0a7481da7afd7

    "4 Galaxy Ranger 4 Express Cohort"Phainon Himeko Rangers: New OP Reflect Build
    ##ykNJ0w8YOKEWAXGYDIXOdQhXe5oMyvVpGRxe9wibXXU=##
    ->Copy to "Currency Wars" - "Strategy Guide" section and enter under "Strategy Code" to use<-

Everyone knows the popular OP Investment Strategies like Owlbert, Eidolon Ascension, or Fortune’s Favor.

Here’s a few to look out for in the new update that I consider OP yet might fly under the radar.

Don’t Underestimate our Bond:

>After activating 8 Bond(s) and completing a battle, obtains 5 random Emblem(s) when entering a Node.

Mortenax Blade entering the equation with 3 Bonds greatly decreases the difficulty in activating the required 8 Bonds. And the cashout is crazy, it’s the same as a Holiday Giftbox, which already provides overtuned rewards for a Prismatic (except Weapon Master) as a tradeoff for its randomness. But with the new patch, the extra Equipment becomes even more valuable.

Gilgamesh directly buffs the team with the number of equipment, and this Investment Strategy gives an effective 10! Most Gold Investment Strategies give 2, with 3 being the high end (Recycling Program, Good Fortune Token: Gold) with the one exception being I Want It ALL: Gold. Both of these Investment Strategies provide so many equipment to make Gilgamesh a strong candidate to slot into your team for more Lucky Strike Damage as well as his generic buffs, especially as the third Energy unit with the newly buffed Energy Bond.

Not only, but with Jingliu’s Bloodflame pairing with Blade and Jiaoqiu changing to DoT to pair with Kafka, Wolf Hunt also now has accessible boards to trigger this effect on lv 7. 5 Equipment will greatly increase Wolf Hunt exp, and you can also high roll a Wolf Hunt Emblem. Just in time for the recent Bond buffs!

https://preview.redd.it/4e5qwx7gxadh1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=fad8de0cdd19c233ea41a617f50f19004a4b6f69

Just a reminder, you can use the Smelting Furnace on multiple emblems at once! Put them onto a unit then use a Furnace on the unit.

On the Road:

>When 3 or fewer Galactic Voyagers are present on the field, characters on the field provide an additional 200% Galactic Voyager stat bonus. Gains "Evanescia" and "Argenti".

Welt joining Galactic Voyagers makes this much better, and the Argenti compensation buffs from removing Energy that made his buffing capabilities better, doubling his Atk buff. The Galactic Voyager DPS like Sparxie and especially Evanescia get a considerable upgrade with this now without having to play Archer for the juicy Lucky Strike Rate. If you get the Galactic Voyager Emblem, the Bond will give an INSANE amount of Lucky Strike Damage. Alternatively, the Emblem also provides a truckload of Lucky Strike stats and is an insane Equipment to put on any DPS.

Use Argenti early for the high amount of On-Field Strength% (compare the 120% Strength this gives to something like Lone Wolf) to buff your DPS, then when you cruise to Welt you will do insane damage.

Express Cohort Emblem & Express Cohort Emblem Set:

>Obtains 1 "Express Cohort Emblem" and 1 "Dan Heng • Imbibitor Lunae".

Obtains 1 "Express Cohort Emblem," 1 "Dan Heng • Imbibitor Lunae", and 1 "High-frequency Chainsaw."

Gold: specifically the one offered on Plane 1. Prismatic: specifically the one offered on Plane 2.

Giving a dhil is very good since he’s usually the hardest to find to make 3 xz, so getting one for free is very good on Plane 1. The chainsaw is usually useless on Plane 1, so it’s better to take this on Plane 2 when you want to get 4 items on Himeko. Himeko joining the school of the Emblem wearer is also great to cook up fun mid game transitions and lets you replace the worthless DHIL before you find RMC.

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There’s also the possibility of placing the emblem on Mortenax Blade. By using 1 Advanced Equipment, 1 Emblem, and 1 Basic Equipment or Trashbag, you can force the copied item from Himeko’s Navigator to be a Privileged Equipment. If anyone gets to test and confirm this, let me know!

Update: this works!!! Except Trashbag is a candidate for upgrade, so use Trashbag/Advanced Equipment + Emblem + Basic Equipment.

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On top of that, it gives 1-4 exp every node (based on how many times the Astral Express smashes enemies, with 1 guaranteed at the start of combat and usually 3 more within 120 AV) which is approximately equal in power level to a Gold Investment Strategy (Empty Stock/Talent Pool/Vacuum, taking into account the Reward Nodes).

Late game, Himeko Navigator selecting the Emblem wearer gives the entire team (store level) x 6 Lucky Strike Damage per stack of Light Rail, or 108/120 Lucky Strike Damage at level 9/10. BTW Light Rail stacks can increase with the Investment Strategy On the Journey, it's insane but you'll probably be picking it anyway for Index rewards.

Golden Trash:

>Gains a "Golden Trash Bag." It provides massive stats and 15 Gold Coins.

Specifically, the one offered on Plane 1.

I’ll actually make two claims about this Investment Strategy. The first is that it provides an obscene amount of value, the second is that it was an instant click last patch.

To understand the first claim, let’s first contextualize the 15g it gives with other econ Investment Strategies. When Investment Strategies provide upfront gold in an early Plane, they usually need to be nerfed to account for how much interest it earns you. Peppy’s Stroll and Peppy’s Stroll+, give 9g and 15g respectively for Plane 1 versus Plane 2 or 3. Another example is Small Copy and Small Copy+, which give 7g on Plane 1 and 13g on Plane 2 or 3. The fact they didn’t nerf this to 9g on Plane 1 is a bit crazy to me, considering 15g upfront is really close to an entire Gold Investment Strategy’s power in gold. The general balance framework of Silver to Gold Investment Strategies is that 1 Gold is slightly less than 2 Silver, which we can spotcheck by looking at Silver Investment: “Immediately choose one of three Silver Investment Strategies, with 3 refresh(es). After 3 Nodes, gains another refresh.” If we go back to Peppy’s Stroll or Harmless Trash which give 9g or 8g, the 15g from Golden Trash is pretty close to double the value of a Silver Investment Strategy. If you consider that generally an upgraded tailored item, in this case significantly upgraded, is already worth a Gold Investment Strategy (TFT players might recognize Portable Forge), Golden Trash provides an obscenely overtuned amount of value on Plane 1.

The second claim boils down to two ideas. The first is that most meta DPS are crit based and are able to make use of the Golden Trash Bag and clear Plane 2 with only 2 Equipment. Not needing a third Equipment is pretty valuable since it delays the pressure on crafting perfect Equipment until later, which gives you more Weapon Boxes and more chances at Basic Equipment. The second is that the econ Investment Strategies are much worse on Plane 2, which makes them better to take on Plane 1. The ones that give money with a lot of value on Plane 2 are stuff like Downsizing which sells everything, or don’t give the money upfront like Longterminism or HyperInflation.

Its instaclick status next patch will hinge on whether the new Himeko and old meta DPS can still clear Plane 2, but you can't really go wrong with a Gold Investment Strategy that's providing the value of two.

Just a caveat: if you only own a few invested units, it’s probably an easier time if you choose Investment Strategies that let you tailor your run towards those units like Fortunes Favor or Free Market. Your units might not crit either which makes half the value in the Golden Trash Bag close to useless.

“flex”, “open”, “commit”. This mini explanation will unpack what these terms mean and level up your decision-making to consistently SSS even with full Trial characters like this:

https://preview.redd.it/naensmwsxpch1.png?width=1620&format=png&auto=webp&s=ee504e8b3b9ecd07efa8101d0aa0bfde47704465

To understand how to play “flex”, it’s easier to first understand the complete opposite, which is to play “committed”. 

“commit” to something means you are proceeding with an irreversible action: 

1. selling a unit that could be used as an alternative. e.g. selling Sunday without Sparkle "commits" you to using Sparkle
2. combining two Basic Equipment into an Advanced Equipment^(1). Now they can’t be made into other equipment. You’re now “committed” to the Advanced Equipment and need to field someone that can make efficient use of the equipment, while also not having either of the basic components available for other Advanced Equipment.
3. refresh the shop. “commit” 2 gold to refresh. Using the gold might also be “committing” to losing interest gold by dropping below 50g.
4. upgrading a unit to 2 star. selling the unit now loses you 1 gold. You “commit” 1 gold for the upgrade

The key skill to SSS every game is to “commit” the least while still clearing the nodes. “committing” too much is often referred to as “overcommitting”. The easiest example is overrolling and spending too much money.

Keeping options “open” means to not commit to any particular line. It’s important to emphasize that typically you “flex” around something strong. In these two example cases, it’ll be the Quantum Resonance core and Firestorm Surge. Here I “flex” by holding extra units while refreshing the shop. Holding them lets me stay open to both options before committing and selling the unnecessary units from the other comp.

https://preview.redd.it/wjxgc53z3qch1.png?width=1744&format=png&auto=webp&s=92c08715a3d7cc58129210db2668cb32d77933c2

https://preview.redd.it/2xc6tob14qch1.png?width=1746&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e6c53c8668bed79adbf0aa8e997f29273788309

Sometimes you need to “commit” to the “flex” – holding units can cost you interest breakpoints, and you might also build Equipment that aren’t ideal. The tradeoff is if you flex 2 options, you double your chances of hitting.

https://preview.redd.it/qifmve244qch1.png?width=1748&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc9c5ae9edf13804f882583589eb0b81e175bac0

Ultimately, holding extra units, making subpar Equipment isn't the skillful part. The skill is knowing whether or not those decisions will still net you a high chance of clearing with SSS.

^(1) without Recycling Program

Equipment Priority

• This is an Ashveil+Aventurine wheelchair comp and their equipment matter!
• Aventurine really wants equipment that give Shield Strength to solo sustain
• Ashveil needs 2x Anti-Grav Boots to drive stack generation, ideally 3
• FuA emblem crafts out of Roller Skates, which makes it hard to also craft Anti-Grav. Avoid crafting it (try to get the emblem without crafting, like directly from the Investment Environment)
• Acheron ideally wants 2x High-frequency Chainsaw, she has relatively low access to Lucky Strike Rate in this comp and Debuff doesn’t give a lot of Strength%
• Firestorm Surge is bait, while it's good with Welt later, you do not have the means to stack it in the midgame and fights end before you would even stack it. Also it uses up your shoes
• Same goes for Pun Generator, FuA+FireStorm+Pun is probably BiS when you hit Welt but you will very likely lose fights before you get there.

This level 7 is quite strong, aim for 2 stars on Ashveil Acheron near the beginning of Plane 2. 3 starring should bring you to level 9

On-Field Black Swan, she gives decent buffs although the vuln has questionable uptime. 4 Debuff is good for 100&#37; Def Shred but not mandatory, especially if you put Reso Pearls on Welt(40&#37;) with 3 star Ashveil (50&#37;), then Pela (30-40&#37;) overcaps a lot and becomes a debuff bot, which is very minimally useful. Don't be afraid to just run 3 Debuff

Investment Strategy

• Money on Plane 3’s Investment Strategy is best to hit your 3 stars on lv 7 then teleport to lv 9, which means you want to get your equipment from Plane 1/2 and Environment
• As mentioned in the Equipment Priority, you don’t want to craft FuA emblem, so try to get it directly
• Hit Where It Hurts: Gold makes it so all Lucky Strike hits count as a debuff application. Items and money are usually more important and it only really pops off at lv 9, however it is probably the best combat Strategy. Eidolon Ascension is also pretty good for Ashveil, Robin Jiaoqiu and Topaz
• Other combat like OOTD are also fine, but usually combat is only takeable from a premium spot when you already have what you need

Affixes

Aventurine’s infinitely refreshing shield trivialise a bunch of Affixes

Good:

• Shielding: Permanent Trauma, Heavy Footfall (Photon Shield)
• Aventurine in slot 1: Magma Bombardment
• Aventurine infinite shielding: Beyond Endurance + Fight or Flight Response + Carried by Inertia, Topaz = Synchronized Action
  • These make Aventurine proc FuA shield refresh a lot as long as his shield doesn’t break. Stack generation / hit count can sometimes be completely carried by these two
• Off-Field Ashveil and special energy character: Energy Disappearance
• 3 star dps: Differential Treatment

Bad:

• Treasure to Trash: this comp really needs its items
• Time Assassin: you can't really control who Ashveil targets, so you will lose a lot of AV before Ashveil ramps up his speed
• Self-Defense: Acheron will kill herself
• Lost Luck: It’s pretty hard to get more Lucky Strike Rate since Equipment economy is so tight, and Robin’s PoF is hard to activate

Neutral: the rest.

Example run following this guide:

• Items taken from Environment (Blue Gem + weapon box) and Plane 1 (IPC Armory Update)
  • IPC Armory lets me greed for boots + fua emblem while I cruise through Plane 1 with 2 DoT 3 Xianzhou
• Lost the first node since I had no opener and decided to cash out scholar. Got 2dot on 1-3, 3xz on 1-4 with 3 skates yaoguang until the boss
• On 1-7 I went to 7 rolled to 0 for the board, got 2 star Ashveil 1 star Acheron. I probably should've taken the L vs Argenti with 3xz 2dot since Acheron didn't show up until I had 0 gold left
• Plane 2 I took combat, since I had already met the item conditions: 2 Boots, 1 Chip, and FuA + Chainsaw + Starcleaver. I couldn't find money even though I really needed it, but it ends up being fine since it's a very strong combat that let me winstreak all of Plane 2 even against Second Plane Enhancement
• Plane 3 I took Golden Trash (SSS tier on Plane 1 btw) and rerolled the Starcleaver, and it also gave some gold that let me make it to lv 9
• I was very unlucky this run, hitting 3 star Ashveil before 2 star Acheron on Plane 3, so I gave up on Acheron. These copies shown I ended up finding on level 9
• All encounters were done on 1 difficulty since the run was very lowroll
• Pom-Pom final boss is really hard to 0c because of its stalling mechanics, so I rolled very aggressively to not lose any fights
• Speed Alternation kind of sucks but not a big deal.

13 winstreak = only lost 1 fight on 1-3

All limited characters are Trial except for e0s0 Robin

Why FuA instead of Galaxy Rangers?

• On level 7 you play Ashveil+Cipher anyway. There aren't any sustains with clear offensive Bond synergy, so Aventurine becomes the best option. The level 7 board fits very nicely with FuA +1 and is strong enough to stabilize and reroll.
• Robin+Ashveil kits provide additional buffs for FuA emblem holders (80 cd, doubled Robin buffs) while GR only provides Amp% as Bond bots which only has linear returns
• 5 FuA recorded damage = OP as it is effectively an undiluted damage multiplier
• While the FuA emblem takes up an item slot, remember that Acheron really likes hit-count for her ult frequency, so playing units that actually attack is intuitively much stronger.

Additional Remarks

This post contains an abbreviation of the full guide and breakdown video here: https://youtu.be/cdgToLWcH5w

Strategy Code:

"5 Follow-Up ATK 4 Debuff"FuA Acheron
##5jxQvvcJWV5YPeQHVgkgwZKwGgYtrerwA1w6rtqcA5o=##

I have been thinking about this 2 Heal variations to play doesn't solo sustain Aventurine on lv 8 in case you don't get dropped Armors. Using Jiaoqiu as the "primary" sustain with healing based equipment (Caloric, Healing Ring) and Aventurine as FuA bond bot will require further testing to see if it's stable on lv7.

https://preview.redd.it/32magmlbz74h1.png?width=1100&format=png&auto=webp&s=88d8c15014c5ac4e06fb24d64357a7a39e6fa802

I have also been testing On-Field Black Swan variations a bit more, since she's a great candidate to activate Robin's LSR PoF. Let me know how it goes if you try either of these out.

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Acknowledgements: Special thanks to sungarsun for discussion, as well as nanoka.cc and Strategy Compendium for their information and making this guide possible.