Noelle the Battle Maid

Yesterday was the first official day of Genshin Impact, seeing as how the servers were not supposed to be active for nearly as long as they were last night. I am not sure how much I talked about it yesterday, but the game has two ranks an account level rank called the Adventure Rank, and a per character level. Many of the things in the game are gated on your Adventurer level and not your character level, and right now my goal is to get to rank 20. Currently there is a promotion going on and if you get to rank 20 before the 1.1 patch lands you end up getting what is supposedly the best healer in the game as a character that you can play. Currently I am Adventurer rank 12 and it feels like it is slowing down considerably already.

All of that said, the core problem folks seem to be having is an inability to download the game. I managed to get it down on PC and my phone… but when it came to installing on the tablet I was doomed with the same challenges that everyone else seems to be having of prodigiously slow download speeds. There are a bunch of “fixes” floating around but it largely seems to be random chance. I won the lottery with my first two connections, and now am in the dregs with so many other people on the tablet. Some folks say that starting and stopping the download can maybe get you a faster speed, and others claim that on the PC at least running it as administrator helps. Whatever the case this seems to be the worst part about this launch because I have not run into any issues actually playing the game on the servers.

Were it not for the download issues I would honestly consider this one of the smoothest MMORPG launches I have ever experienced. I’m now in the process of populating my friends list with players and I gotta say Yuhki is making me feel completely inadequate here. Dario is just a bit ahead of me and Namaslays just a bit behind, but I figure she will catch up rapidly. I’ve not had a chance to test out any of the multiplayer options, but I will say one of the huge positives of this game is that there will always be another character to level. Right now I am in the midst of trying to sort out what I want to be my primary team of characters.

My favorite character by far is Noelle the Battle Maid. She is a Geo character which seems to be a fairly neutral element that isn’t super weak to much of anything but also not really super strong. She is by far the most tanky character that I have because her E is a crystalline shield that she can surround herself with. It has a neat intrinsic ability of absorbing the first element that it comes into contact with and then any damage taken of that element actually heals Noelle. She is a two handed wielding character so I tend to main her and use the other characters to apply elemental debuffs that she then exploits while they are weakened.

Another character that I pulled is someone that I think Ashgar would like, because it is essentially Kevin from Trials of Mana. Instead of transforming into a werewolf however, he has a void spirit wolf that is his ultimate and allows him to take that form and dish out massive damage. Other than that he is a two hander character, which makes me highly likely not to use him much given that I am already pretty damned attached to Noelle. Had I gotten this character first though, I would have likely spent more time playing it.

The last of the characters that I have pulled is Sucrose and honestly… I am not feeling her at all. I mean I don’t love the way that the pure casters feel in this game for starters. On top of that she is the same elemental type as the Traveler so it immediately hampers her usefulness. Maybe at some point I will stop playing with the primary character, and then her value might become more evident. I was really hoping when I saw her that she would end up being a healer of some sort, but sadly instead is a wind mage.

At the moment my party looks a little like this with the main character leading, Amber in the two slot for sweet sweet fire debuffs and when I need to do ranged attacks, Noelle in the three slot as my tank and the one I end up running around the world with the most and the four slot is mostly swap space for whoever I need to run with for a specific encounter. I lean towards Lisa because she can at least apply a decent damage debuff but I am also not super thrilled with her as an actual damage dealer. If I could find a four star or better two-hander I would probably kick my traveler character to the curb and replace him with icy boy or just run a double mage combo with Sucrose giving me some wind power.

Noelle so far really is my jam and having a lot of fun playing with the character. The only problem is without having that four star weapon I am really questioning if I should be pouring resources into her weapon, which in turn limits her damage output. I’ve heard for brawler type characters that the base damage of the weapon ends up making a huge difference in how much damage they are capable of dishing out. I need to do some research to see what quests can end up getting me a two hander that is at least four star, since adventure rank 10 got me a four star one handed sword.

All in all I am super into this game. We’ve talked on AggroChat about a mobile/pc hybrid MMORPG being the next big thing. I don’t think this one works exactly like Tam had envisioned but it does make me wonder if we are witnessing the birth of a new phenomena here. I played Dragalia Lost for a really long time, and had I been able to play it on my PC I probably would STILL be playing it. I think for me the real determinant is going to be if the Switch version cross plays with PC. If that happens then I am so on board with this game because it will let me play the same characters on the two platforms that I care the most about, all the while still giving me access from a phone in the times when it is the only gaming device I have on me. I wish Sony would have not been butts about cross play yet again, because right now they are the only platform that is walled off from the others. That almost happened with Destiny 2 until Bungie and the community shamed them into supporting it.

Now that hopefully more folks have had a chance to play, any new thoughts about the game? If you are playing throw me a friend request at 600023101. I have no clue how any of the multiplayer stuff works yet but I am sure at some point there will be grouping happening. Are you feeling the game or is this going to be a pass for you? I ‘m still poking my head into World of Warcraft on a daily basis as well and I hope to finish my Rogue before the expansion pre-patch but right now I am trying real hard to hit 20 adventurer and then I can chill out a bit. I want that free healer!

1 thought on “Noelle the Battle Maid”

  1. Seven rerolls, not a single 5*. This qualifies me as Unlucky, failing a 71% chance roll. Finally moved to PC, and rerolling isn’t an hour of hell like on tablet. That first bit is pretty fun, and I’d like to actually properly play someday.

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