I've been trying to understand the ordering of triggers in this game and I'm not sure if there are any defined rules. The most interesting ordering situation I have come up with revolves around the relic Critical Singularity. I think you can appreciate why ordering matters for that relic. So, let's get on with it.

The situation setup:

I have Yuuna with 3rd path Night shade. Base crit 75.

I have Dragomir with 3rd path the kingpin; additionally, Dragomir has the upgrade Baked Presence (which is Rush X: assassins gain crit equal to shards in bank)

I have the relic Critical Singularity.

I have the relic Assassin's Greed Banner on 130 shards, meaning all assassins "gain" 26 attack and magic damage.

I have the relic Shield Vessel which reads Heroes "gain" 30 magic and 30 attack. Note that the order of magic then attack is the opposite of greed banner, not relevant but awkward.

Ok the testing. I ran back-to-back battles, in one battle I had 3 shards in the bank, in the second I had 113 (popped my rewind). However, in both battles Dragomir's kingpin was set to 130 bonus crit.

Here's what happens in battle 1:

• I press fight bootahn
• Yuuna's crit gets set to 280, presumably 150 from crit sing and 130 from Kingpin, but no bonus from Banked Presence's 3 crit.
• Yuuna's attack and magic are set to my base values plus the benefit from both Shield Vessel and Greed banner, 56 bonus.
• At 10 seconds Yuuna's crit drops to 75.

Now Battle 2:

• I press that gray box in the corner.
• Yuuna's crit gets set to 318, presumably her base crit 75 + 113 baked presence + 130 kingpin.
• Yuuna's attack and magic are set to 176, presumably 150 from crit sing + 26 from assassin's greed banner.
• At 10 seconds Yunna's crit drops to 75.

Phew . . .

So, what is happening. My best guess is that the ordering of effects at start of combat are:

1. Rush trigger from Baked Singularity and the "gain" from Shield Vessel

2. Trigger from Critical Singularity.

3. Rush trigger from Kingpin and the "gain" from Greed's Banner

Here's why. When Baked Singularity's bonus was only 3, Yuuna's crit was bumped up to 150 exactly, by crit sing and then 130 from kingpin. Had both backup abilities happened after crit sing then her crit would be 283. However, when Baked Singularity was 113 her crit then became 318, meaning crit sing did not bump her crit up but instead her crit was already over 150 with crit sing triggered.

Both Shield Vessel and Greed's banner use the word "gain" but the term doesn't convey a strict meaning. Shield Vessel's bonus is visible on Yuuna's char sheet prior to the start of the fight, but the banner's bonus doesn't occur until fight start.

My thought's?

I think that the game would benefit from having a strict programmatic meaning for the word "gain". I think there should be two different keywords that differentiate between static buffs, and at start of combat buffs. Perhaps instead of "gain" the text would read Combat Start: gain x. Note the text of Critical Singularity is "At start of combat, . . ."

I think life would be easier for the players and ultimately the developers if there was a strict ordering of triggers at start of combat between rush, gain, "At start of combat". This strict ordering would need to include rules about the order of triggers within a category, like what order Rush triggers happen in. Trying to hard code orders for every possible situation now and the in the future is going to be a nightmare. Anyway, that's my two cents, 2 decades of Software Engineering Design (logical fallacy).

p.s. Please, for the love of God, move the event text off to the side. I can't see the Dragon's life bar when I'm under "well rested".

I know this is a bit self indulgent and shit, but I just wanted to holler out real quick my appreciation since I don't have a discord or twitter or whatever.

I fucking love you guys.

This game caught me early, and I decided to make a site about it. I hoped it'd catch on. And a month later, we're at 70k logs. That's insane.

So thank you guys. Seriously. I've tried to make the best site I can make, and to know people are using it/enjoying it, I mean - it's something I dreamt of but never really thought would happen.

So thanks. Thanks like a lot.

Just in case you're out of the loop, my website is https://redrift.gg

So like, I am having huge issue understanding any level of consistency in this game that allows people to chain together RRs.

I have watched guides, I have watched streamers that are better at the game then me, and I feel like I have to be missing something.

The amount of time I have a run that is going well just absolutely brick because I am unable to upgrade my heroes passed rank B is unreal.

I could deal with it if the shop were giving me the option to sell and roll into another hero thats A or S, but its hard to understand how the fuck I am supposed to progress when my shop is filled with common items and C rank heroes well into the middle of act two.

Like I've cleared RRs before, I know its possible, and I know it can't possibly be just down to luck because i know people streak, but without fail every guide and every streamer that is streaking is able to roll into upgrades for their units or roll into a better unit to sub out for one of the ones they currently have.

At this point I feel like I am missing something about the roll mechanics, percentages, or some shit. So what the fuck is it?

I've been playing for the last few weeks on red rift and just can't get a win. I have pretty much 100% success rate for act 1 but usually the run falls apart midway into act 2. What I keep finding is I have one very good character but the other two let the team down

I also struggle with mage/mystic basically never being the very good character.

I'm trying to get more scaling I'm act 1 as I'm guessing I don't scale well enough but I'm having no luck. Any advice for making my act2 more consistent

Something that came over with the patch notes buffing once again Zuri’s cruel spec. Playing a lot of red rift, casual amount of streaks (capped at 9-10 for now at every ladder reset).

The issue with Cruel imo isn’t the ability itself, but more that it doesn’t fix any of Zuri’s issues, making it very situational.

You basically want to pick it only if you have a poison relic, or mainly as a gimmick if you have Hoyoung conduit stack and perma stun.

The thing about Zuri’s current design is that she’s one of the weakest C rank champs, while her other specs make her really tanky from mid A1 to mid A2.

But she falls off a cliff. And that’s mainly because of her assassin class.

Unlike the other tanks, Zuri gets proposed 2 assassin options. It would be cool if most of them didn’t suck thinking of Zuri.

Stealth is useless for who is supposed to be the main tank. On crit boosts can be good (regen or scaling), but on crit damage boost is useless. Shard on crit is super good, shard on kill less.

This means that out of her 4 rank A upgrades you’ll usually find one which is very useless, and another which works if she already has great tank items, less otherwise.

And then you have 2 tank upgrades, most of which are very situational and depend on stall triggers, or status your composition can inflict. However, this is something you can kinda maneuver… provided you have more options. But unlike the others, Zuri kinda doesn’t.

Rowan and Niklas have Vanguard which is also super good defensively, Skorn has 3 tank choices, Pimenta duelist can live with duelist upgrades as she’s great offensively. While Pimenta mage suffers from the same problem of having truly two choices only for defense, she has both inbuilt stall and poison, unlike Zuri who needs to choose between stall or poison ; making her more flexible. Tank Gustav is kinda one of the weakest tanks imo aside of very situational setups, but some field mystic upgrades (looking at outbreak) are also super strong so he can work it out.

So an A rank Zuri, either offered in the shop or even upgraded, usually can fall pretty flat. Especially when offered in the shop, as getting a Cruel + Stealth combo is particularly horrible.

I personally think the following should apply:

- Zuri’s passive’s cap should level scale like Ratna, Logan or Grace. Currently I think it doesn’t, and it makes her the least pickable tank if you get her late.

- Zuri’s A rank should not have the stealth options. They are horrible on her. Other assassin options are fine for fun, but stealth makes it impossible to pick her as she’s not a good off tank in most of her specs currently.

- The Cruel should have some sort of defensive effect. To line her up with her other specs, I’d say either Vamp or HP Regen. Lower the stun or poison if needed. But the stun truly does not do enough to be work, and while the damage is good to sync with vamp, it’s hard to justify it on a tank for the active (Pimenta duelist can take vamp because her dmg is consistent).

I honestly think she’s a serviceable champ right now but one of the worst early and late game tanks. While early game should be by design, I think she can definitely be a bit better late game. But perhaps I’m wrong and The Cruel is already fine. Open to criticism here.

I can make it to the first boss maybe half the time. It was pretty easy to get to Red Rift, however is there some team formation you need, or do you need to roll for class B faster - are common items a waste - what team formations should i be looking for

Omnivamp guy kind of made life easy - however the support characters seem to die off quickly, and too many tanks seem to not do enough damage fast enough or they get killed in the poison round

Are specific characters needing to go together or are certain build going to work more effectively - seems like i am missing some basic things

should i not be going for the first challenge then trying to skip it (i die alot there) or that first campfire should i take and then skip the next one ?

Pretty much just the title. I keep seeing posts about people loving the character but I for the life of me know if I take him I'm losing in act 1. Please oh Reddit teach me the ways of Niklas!

I'm thinking that if instead of balancing these and keeping them static, what if they rotated what the requirements were each patch (or X patches), allowing the RR meta to not be stale/formulaic for too long, but also not having to balance the champions themselves around the top difficulty or 1% of players?

I can't think of too many games like this where the top difficulty actually has so many individual requirements to pull on, and that could be changed so quickly.

Obviously there's still some relic/champ/item balancing that still needs to get ironed out first regardless, but what do you all think of this as a longer-term approach?

If you check https://redrift.gg/meta and look at pairs of heroes you'll see that in redrift the lovers Sal & Pimenta are

A) One of the most picked duos in the game (5th highest)

B) With one of the highest act 1 clear rates of any duo (81%)

C) With the LOWEST full clear rate of any highly picked duo (38%)

So, what's going on?

Well, I believe it has all got to do with the lovers trait and how people are playing it wrong. On its face the trait seems simple, Pimenta gives Sal a bunch of attack speed, Sal gives Pimenta a bunch of armor, and then you scale into the lategame and crush the final boss together. Right?

Wrong, you get wrecked at the final boss because your damage is bad and despite 700 armor you aren't that tanky. What gives?

Well, to put it simply Sal and Pimenta's B tier choices are both really important, and giving a bunch of stats to a bad unit missing a B tier spec isn't going to win you the game. That said, with the lover buffs AND a real B tier spec either one is capable of hard carrying a run... on their own.

So, the tragic strategy -

Act 1 - Pick up Sal & Pimenta, whichever one gets upgraded to B tier first gets the Lover. Whichever is upgraded second gets either Spicy or Brisk.

Act 2 - Scale for as long as you can, and then about half way through sell the lover for a better tank/dps. Ignore Pimenta's cries as she watches 300 attack speed Sal run off with Rowan "the friend".

Tips for lover scaled Pimenta:

Once Pimenta has 300+ armor along with spicy (duelist) she is the best lifesteal tank in the game. She doesn't really need to worry about regular damage, she just needs to lifesteal enough to out-heal poison and burn, which is easy to do.

Prioritize attack speed, lifesteal, and relics that provide debuffs. Plague bauble is incredible, duelist's foil (AS + Omnivamp + extra AS every 15 autos) is BIS on her. In general you don't need to worry too much about defensive items, health is nice but you can get more effective health from omnivamp so I think it's best to just focus on attack speed and omnivamp (even the 5 gold AS/omni item is pretty good!)

A lover scaled Pimenta is the best solo unit in the game, with items and a debuff relic she can pretty consistently solo challenges, and even the final boss - her damage is really good and she will usually be your top DPS.

She isn't super team reliant, but duelists that give her AS buff are nice, so are mystics that can give her more effective health, or anyone who can apply debuffs if you miss a debuff relic. Respeccing your lover Sal into a breezy Sal also makes her a great partner late game.

Tips for lover scaled Sal:

Some people like the Breezy (duelist), which is more popular right now, but trying both out I'm pretty sure the Brisk (warrior) is much stronger with this strat. With items and lover scaling a Brisk Sal will kill bosses and rooms stupidly fast, well before Breezy Sal can scale up.

Brisk Sal scales very well with pretty much every offensive stat - Magic, AD, AS, crit, and mana are all great on her, so are on-hit effects! IMO the single best item is Wizard's focus for the starting mana, AP and crit. After that I like Mage's wand for starting mana and scaling AP (if her bonus attacks kill it scales wand), but spellblade and polymath prism and siphoning dagger and like 10 other items are all great on her as well.

She works with a lot of frontliners, but one of the best IMO is intrepid Kai - she's great at applying the on hit armor debuff and can do enough damage to down bosses/rooms before intrepid Kai's initial rush shield is up. Anyone who can buff her even further, like backup Tilly, is also great.

I don't understand this character at all. What the hell are you supposed to do with this guy? He classified as a vanguard but just seems so shit at everything. I must be doing something "wrong"

Say I have a hero with 50 base armor and 1000 hp. Do I get more effective HP out of the common item for 30 armor or 200 HP? This is a very common early game decision.

What about 100 armor and 1500 hp?

And then what about late game tanks - with 250+ armor I'd assume HP is better from then on, but if the tank is getting shielded a ton by a mystic then that's essentially generating HP for them which in turn makes armor more effective by intuition so I'm just kind of lost on which is better when. From just playing the game a lot I feel like I can never have enough armor but is that wrong?

Any game math wizards out there?

So I have a couple hundred (almost) hours in and play exclusively RR. I've gotten to the point of getting 1-2 wins, lose, rinse repeat for the last two weeks. What keeps happening, especially this patch , is my tank or secondary damage dies in one shot within seconds and I lose a perfect run…or I just win.

I study the game etc and just don’t understand what I’ve done wrong or even the difference between my winning runs or immediate losses. I have a solid A or S tank fully equipped and they poof, or my warrior just dies in one AOE or whatever.

TLDR: I really would love some general or specific tips specifically to survive the second act boss; it seems to be my bottleneck and it’s getting a little frustrating.

If you want a quick way to win consistently at Red Rift, here is the one-line strategy guide: Be as rich as you can without compromising your ability to win the next fight. The reality is a lot more complicated than that, but that's a good summary of the core strategy you should be following.

If you look at the Red Rift leaderboard, there are players with 50+ streaks, meaning they have a close to 100% win rate. This should prove to you that basically every run on Red Rift is winnable. So why aren't you winning all your games? The reason why you lose is because you do not see the necessary pieces to scale into late game. And the reason why you do not see those pieces is because you are poor. Which naturally leads into the core strategy described above.

Now executing on the "be rich" strategy is not so simple. It requires you to have a good understanding of the following things:

• Which damage/durability thresholds you need to meet in order to win any given fight. This mostly comes with experience and is by far the most important thing to learn. The entire strategy depends on knowing when you are "strong enough" and then greeding to the maximum afterwards. And you cannot pull of this strategy when you don't know where "enough" is.

• The long-term shard value of each action. This can be done by using your brain and converting things into shard-value.

• Which things to buy to win the late game. This also comes with experience and is especially relevant for the Post-Boss Shop, which is usually the single strongest power boost in the entire game and is a spot you ideally want to be very rich for to maximize the odds of seeing something immediately run-winning.

Going in-depth into the above points would take way too long, and a lot of it really just comes down to playing the game to develop experience/intuition, but here are a few basic examples:

• Buying the Act 1 Key Fragment early "effectively" generates 2 shards per round until the boss (that is because it must be bought eventually and is 2 shards more expensive after each fight). If you started with a strong early game hero like Reyna, you can often get away with buying a tank + key fragment in the first shop, which lets you get started on early game econ/preparing for the post-boss shop. If however you started the run with a hero like Aria or Gustav then you will usually need to buy 2 heroes in the first shop or else you will die to the second fight. (This immediately makes starting with weak early game heroes a lot worse, since they will cost you shards going into the Post-Boss shop.)

• Buying a quest is also a way to "effectively" generate extra shard value, assuming you are strong enough to buy the quest. This can be a better alternative to buying the Key Fragment if a good quest shows up. Quests that directly generate money like Victory Vessel are most obvious (+15 extra shards worth of value after 3 fights). But even something that doesn't give you money directly can be converted into a monetary value. For example, Frost Vessel gives you close to 20-30 shards worth of stats once completed, so buying it early effectively generates 10-20 shards.

• Some strong items/heroes can also generate a lot more shard value than normal. For example Sentinel's Plate is a rare item that often provides more stats than an Epic item if you can meet its (relatively easy) condition, which effectively generates you money because you need to spend less in order to win the upcoming fights. Going back to a previous example, an early Reyna is also effectively an econ play because you need less to win the early fights with her on your team, meaning you can spend the resources on generating more money. Scaling is also a way to generate more shard value than normal. An item like Warrior's Greataxe can provide huge stats if scaled a few times, and taking a scaling hero like Backup Rowan can pay off hugely later if you can afford it (you need to know that you are strong enough to win the immediate fights, however).

• Getting an early B rank assassin (or Tilly) is often easy mode, since they usually provide a ton of shard-value over the course of the run while not being bad immediately. Even if you sell them immediately once you get to act 2 you will usually be well set up for late game (assuming you navigated the post-boss shop well). There are other heroes as well that provide econ as well but you have to be strong to carry them (such as Gustav).

• If you are weak and have to speculate or buy short-term power, you can also calculate the cost of speculating. For example, if you buy a common item to win the next fight and then sell it back later, that costs you -2 shards total. Buying a C rank hero and then selling it back is -6 shards. On the other hand, buying anything on sale is often quite nice (as long as it isn't completely terrible) because it significantly reduces the cost of speculating. For example, buying C rank hero on sale to get you through the next combat or give you an extra out at a B rank for the challenge fight only costs 2 shards instead of 6, which is much more palatable. Keep in mind that this is one of the most important places to lock in and play correctly, because when you are weak is the exact spot where narrow shard margins matter the most.

A "standard" flowchart for a run is something as follows:

• Be exactly as strong as you need to be in order to beat every fight in act 1, while focusing on generating as much shard-value as possible.

• Have a good post-boss shop where you solidify your plan for act 2. At this point your team/gameplan is a bit more locked in.

• Know where the holes in your current composition are, and roll a bit more liberally in act 2 to fix those problems. For example, if your damage is good but you know that your current tank will not cut it for the entire act, you want to be rolling for tank relics, a rank up for your tank, or an A rank tank replacement that is better than your current tank. (Usually in act 1 you roll 1 time max per shop unless you are actively dying, whereas in act 2 you will often roll two or three times per shop since you are looking for something specific.)

Disclaimer: I am not the best Guildrun player, but I would consider myself decent (10-streak on the current patch). I am friends with multiple players who are a lot better than I am however, including players that have been near or at the top of the Red Rift leaderboard, and this playstyle is something that I have learned from them. (I am just much worse than they are because my intuition/game sense is not as good.)