How would you evaluate the newly added permanent gameplay in version 1.6 of "Honkai： Star Rail"： the first phase of fictional narrative? How do the Intellectual-type characters and other Fate characters perform?

Here it is. A timeline where Duck reveals the truth to the public.

Tales from the World of Belobog

Engaging in conversation with that strange bird and choosing to hear less thrilling stories, you can uncover three segments of “history”, two from Belobog and one from Xianzhou. Here’s a compilation (the titles are my own creation, with two images representing the beginning and end, and the original dialogue in between):

The First Story - “Doomsday Solitude: Belobog and the Dark Lord Tigris”

Now, the snowstorm has suddenly ceased. The city becomes warm and livable, and life begins to revive. Some say it was several heroes who somehow stopped the snowstorm, allowing Belobog to be reborn.

In reality, it was the ploy of the extinction lord “Xingxiao”, set before her legion was destroyed by the snowstorm. A seed of the extinction lord was placed outside the storm, waiting for the opportunity to reign over the world again.

As the people of Belobog rejoiced in the revival of everything, someone suddenly saw that the ice-encased phantom soldiers were waking up, assembling in the remaining snowfields.

The seed planted by Xingxiao had now sprouted. She made the snowstorm retreat, the ice melt, and those who should have slept forever wake up to seek revenge.

The phantom soldiers kneeled on the ground, swearing allegiance to this fearsome leader, and collectively chanted her chilling title -

“Lord Tigris the Dark!"

Such a tragedy.

---

The Second Story - “The Great Trial of Beicheng and the Yaliluo Civil War”

The case is indeed bizarre: the next guardian returned from the snowfields, claiming that the previous guardian, Cocolia, had betrayed Belobog and was executed on the spot.

At the scene, witnesses who could confirm Bronya’s words were members of the resistance and an alien fugitive. Additionally, two people who were not present but had firsthand experience were officials ousted by Cocolia and her brother.

Since every witness had a motive to kill Cocolia, naturally, few believed Bronya’s tale. She was quickly overthrown by Pela, who then held a major trial that would decide the fate of Beicheng.

During the trial, more and more evidence was presented, and the truthfulness of Bronya’s testimony began to be validated. Under normal proceedings, the temporary military court should have reached a conclusion in a few months.

However, public division and the jostling of interest groups didn’t allow the court time to conclude. On the seventh day of the trial, a civil war broke out.

Perhaps by the time of the civil war, most people already knew Bronya wasn’t lying. But at this point, the “truth” had lost all meaning.

When the Interstellar Peace Company intervened and incorporated Yaliluo-VI into its trade system, many wise people regretted their past actions. But what could be done by then?

---

The Third Story - “The Wing Maker’s Feint Deceiving the Alliance, General Qing’s Brilliant Strategy Breaks Fertility”

This person usually keeps a low profile, hiding amongst the common people. Everyone thinks she is just a powerless and insignificant person.

Of course, this is the safest. Neither the Fertility Envoy nor the extinction lords are likely to accurately locate this shadow general.

The shadow general excels at divining fortune, but scorns using it for personal gain. In her view, seeking good fortune and avoiding bad is for the mediocre, to win big, one must gamble big, unafraid of loss.

Like that day, when the Alliance gathered forces to assist the Society of Wisdom in clearing aberrations in a star sector. While trying to break through the blockade of the Wing Maker’s mercenaries, Luofu, the diviner, thought it best to gather superior forces and attack at a weaker point.

But the shadow general said, “No, we should attack where they are most strongly defended.” Knowing the shadow general’s resolute character, no one dared to object.

Only Fu Xuan spoke tremblingly: “Lord Qingque, the enemy is well-prepared. If we rashly attack where they are strongly defended, our forces might get trapped…”

The shadow general, playing with a jade token in her hand, smiled and said, “Xuanzi, let’s make a bet. I bet their guns have no bullets.”

As it turned out, due to the internal strife between Budeli people and the Wing Makers, the logistics of that mercenary army had completely collapsed.

“Their weak point” was actually their last remaining strength, while the seemingly strongest defense was just numerous defeated soldiers putting on a brave front, hoping to deceive the Alliance army.

---

Summary: Fictional Historian - The Beak Speaks.

Friendly Reminder:

This event lasts for 42 days, and the number of stars you’ll earn for playing today is the same as playing six weeks from now.

I just completed the first level today, and I went through it effortlessly by using auto-battle.

Yin Yue Jun and Jing Liu.

However, I expect the difficulty to increase as I progress further.

I’m looking forward to it!

The pure and beautiful goddess Idelira possesses unparalleled beauty!

Defending the beauty in the Milky Way!!!

No need to offer it to her first, just defend it twice~!

Swaro, are you sick? You keep catching me to drink moon, one gray-haired beauty, one white-haired beauty.

You’re catching Drink Moon? Beware of the Robot Male Ketone.

Clara may not be as beautiful as defending the beauty in the Milky Way.

But she can still get some soup, and without Black Tower, the score is about the same; you can switch to Stop Cloud.

Huh? The quality of the Zhihu game zone is really not exaggerated.

Seriously, the difficulty of the first episode of fictional narrative is not very high, if you have characters with wisdom and knowledge, the difficulty is much lower than Abyss 11 and 12.

Jizi + Black Tower is standing!

Jing Yuan Yuan finally got his loyal Thunder Weakness!

Destruction 3C, Mirror Flow once again proved its queen status, still in the ice-weak large and small environment.

Clara can play but still drinks soup, unlike Yin Zhi who just brings the pot directly, but Clara’s ultimate ability charges quickly and the upper half effect is actually good.

Assist healers can bring damage with their ultimates.

Pella, Rakshasa, Fuxuan, if it’s an output setup, Fuxuan performs the best.

The duck that can pull the turn and steal is still a real god.

If you have Clara, it even turns into a game of speed, because the charging is very fast, and using the ultimate before the enemy’s action will not miss a lot of damage.

But if you have enough skill, it can be automatic.

Because it doesn’t require survival, you can completely give up the survival position and boss, and you can still reach 60,000 points with all characters kneeling.

It’s tough. For the sake of 30 points, I spent a whole day finally finishing it. The main character is really strong, and I even forgot to equip him this time.

The quality of Zhihu’s gaming community is really high. I used Destruction for both upper and lower halves, and even the Fire Lord didn’t wear any equipment in the lower half.

As long as I don’t allow comments, XS is definitely the truth.

Hakutaki is very happy, Jingyuan is also very happy, but Shenzun is not happy.

This bird is called “Youci,” hopefully not pinching its UC Shock Department.

It took two hours to finally complete the concavity.

Next time, it will be filled with something very simple.

Strategies for Fictional Narratives with Strong C-Units in Arknights

Here are some powerful C-Unit operators in Arknights for fictional narrative challenges: SilverAsh, Jizi, Schwarz, and Saria, as well as 4-star operators like Exusiai. Kafka hasn’t been extensively tested, and there may be discussions about her low luck. Among them, the Jizi team can choose double C-Units based on the weaknesses of different attributes. For example, you can choose Schwarz for missions with many enemies weak to lightning or Blacktail for missions with many enemies weak to ice. If survival pressure is low, the optimal choice is still to sacrifice survival and choose 2 defenders and 2 supporters.

As predicted before, fictional narratives are most suited for operators who can deal with 3C attacks. This is because even with Broca, the number of attacks in a single round is fixed, making it impossible to handle issues like single-action damage overflow and low enemy numbers. In turn-based action-value games, when enemies require your characters to eliminate them within as few actions as possible, there are generally two strategies left:

1. Use operators with high intelligence who can eliminate enemies in one attack, and some operators have chase abilities, achieving “single-action, multiple kills.”

2. Use operators like Ch’en who rely on their own abilities to deal more actions within a low action-value, achieving “multiple actions, multiple kills.”

Either of the above conditions can generally achieve a 0-turn victory.

Good news for group roles, but there are still bosses to deal with.

It is estimated that teams that focus on single-target and group damage, or those that prioritize spreading damage, will be popular.

Furthermore, due to the large number of small monsters, there will be improvements in energy cycling. For example, Carvka can start her rotation, Ru Mei can use her ultimate after two basic attacks, and Yin Zhi can use her ultimate in succession. 2+2’s Yinyue can perform a 3Q3 combo with every move, and Klara can use her ultimate after one basic attack…

The above situations often occur when dealing with small monsters. The specifics will depend on the situation, so we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Evaluation of the New Mode “Fictional Narrative”

The tides have turned, and it’s finally a good time for group damage characters in the new “Fictional Narrative” mode! In this edition of “Game Talk,” we’ll list some powerful characters for this mode, hoping to assist those who are still observing or haven’t fully upgraded their characters yet.

Stage Mechanics

Before discussing the characters, let’s first understand the mechanics of the “Fictional Narrative” stage. This will become clearer when combined with the character traits.

Game Talk Effect: Ultimate skills can apply “Burst” (up to 6 layers) to the target, which detonates at the beginning of their turn or when they are defeated, causing damage to the target and adjacent units. This means that characters specializing in group damage with ultimate skills will be highly favored, allowing for significant additional damage and reducing the need for high character levels.

Additionally, before challenging a stage, each team can choose one of the following enhancements: ① Eruption, suitable for teams with average ultimate skill damage but high frequency of use; ② Exuberance, versatile and suitable for any team; ③ Fracture, ideal for teams where ultimate skills are the primary source of damage.

During battles, enemies will continuously appear, and defeating enemies or causing damage will earn you points. The requirement for a 3-star rating is 60,000 points. If you’re just aiming for a perfect score, don’t worry too much about how to defeat the final boss with reduced health. Reducing their health by about 40% and dealing with various minions should be enough to achieve a perfect score.

Recommended Characters

[Excellent Support] Ruan Mei, Brionia, Aisda, Ting Yun, Rakshasa, Fu Xuan (highly skilled players can forgo survival positions).

In “Fictional Narrative,” there are many small enemies, making it easy for teammates to break their resilience, trigger Ruan Mei’s additional damage to broken targets, and increase the damage share. Brionia and Aisda are classic choices for increasing teammate action frequency, which is crucial in fixed-turn stages. Ting Yun enhances teammate ultimate skill frequency, aligning with the stage’s characteristics. Rakshasa and Fu Xuan provide survival support while having group-oriented ultimate skills that can apply “Burst” stacks and break resilience.

[Top-tier Damage Dealers] Yin Zhi, Black Tower, Jizi, Jing Yuan, Xiluwa, Pei La. The enemies in this mode are weak to physical, ice, fire, and thunder damage. Yin Zhi’s 90-energy ultimate skill keeps dealing continuous damage; Black Tower triggers follow-up attacks when enemies are below half health, making it excellent for clearing small enemies; Jizi excels at breaking weak point stacks and follow-up attacks, making her efficient against miscellaneous enemies. Jing Yuan and Xiluwa are particularly effective against thunder-weak enemies.

[Second-tier Damage Dealers] Xi Er, Yinyue, Ren, Cafuca. This mode can be completed with these characters, but it requires some skill and practice. If you want to rely on auto-battle, achieving a perfect score may be challenging.

As you can see, there are already 4 permanent characters in the top-tier (Black Tower, Jizi, Xiluwa, Pei La). Based on personal testing, even a level 70 Black Tower with minimal investment can perform well in this mode, highlighting the strength of these character mechanics! For players who have been struggling against groups of enemies, consider investing in these two characters (no need to max them out). For example, pairing Black Tower with Pei La using their respective “Morning Ritual” and “Before Starting Newbie Tasks” skills. These two characters can easily meet the requirements for clearing stages, reducing the overall challenge significantly.

Conclusion

Change your perception of “Destruction C” from previous modes and get to know group damage characters better. In the future, “Fictional Narrative” will alternate with “Chaos Memories” updates. With the constant appearance of small enemies in this pattern, intelligent characters will need to be trained early to fully enjoy the benefits!

However, “Game Talk” for this season’s “Fictional Narrative” lasts for 42 days, providing ample time to cultivate your characters. There’s no need to rush; perhaps, by the time it’s over, Pinocani will introduce new characters to surprise you.

Overview of “Fictional Narrative” and “Chaos Memories” Modes

“Fictional Narrative” consists of four stages, with a maximum reward of 720 Star Jades in each edition, meaning you can earn 180 Star Jades per stage. This requires less time compared to conquering “Chaos Memories.”

Additionally, “Fictional Narrative” also supports a “Quick Clear” feature! Currently, this feature can be used to quickly unlock the first three stages of “Fictional Narrative,” simplifying future runs.

In the team formation screen, you will still need two teams to participate, with a requirement of 60000 points for a 3-star rating.

On the right side of the team formation panel, there is a new Buff selection slot, different from “Chaos Memories. Each edition’s Buff is divided into two parts: the main Buff and three additional enhancements with different conditions. Players need to choose according to their team’s composition, and the upper and lower enhancements should not overlap.

In “Fictional Narrative,” enemies will immediately respawn upon death, with each group consisting of five enemies. This mode challenges players' understanding of the current Buff and their characters' ability to handle groups of enemies.

As mentioned earlier, to achieve a perfect score, you need to earn 60000 points, which can be obtained by dealing damage to or defeating enemies.

From the previews, “Fictional Narrative” mainly features numerous small enemies. If you can eliminate them promptly, they won’t even get a chance to attack. This reduces the team’s survival pressure compared to “Chaos Memories.” In terms of survival roles, buffs like “Huo Huo” are expected to be popular. As for the main DPS roles, intelligent characters like “Yin Zhi,” “Jizi,” and “Black Tower” perform well, especially those who can take additional actions after meeting certain conditions, such as Jizi’s additional attack after breaking 3 times or Black Tower’s additional attack when enemies are below half health.

Leading the way with a DoT (Damage over Time) team in “Fictional Narrative” is another viable strategy. With the upcoming release of “Ruan Mei” in version 1.6, the DoT team can deal damage faster and provide higher team-wide damage boosts, making it effective in both “Fictional Narrative” and “Chaos Memories.” (Especially since 1.6 features a rerun of Cafuca, and there’s the important addition of a 5-star character with DoT capabilities, Black Swan, so don’t miss out.)

“Chaos Memories” introduces two new stages, 11 and 12, with an additional 120 Star Jades as a reward in each edition.

It also implements a “Quick Clear” feature. After the 1.6 update, Explorers can start from the 7th floor based on the highest 3-star floor achieved in previous “Forgotten Courtyard: Chaos Memories” editions, skipping the need to repeat previous stages. (Apologies for the repetition in the previous paragraph.)

In the 1.6 version, there’s also an optimization in the character formation within “Forgotten Courtyard.” When strategizing in “Forgotten Courtyard,” your character formation will inherit the team used in the previous stage and automatically arrange them. Additionally, there are quick buttons for clearing the current configuration or quickly swapping the upper and lower team configurations.

In summary, “Chaos Memories” requires that all team members survive for a perfect score, emphasizing the importance of survival roles. When selecting survival role characters, look for keywords like “emergency healing, damage reduction, crowd control, low skill point consumption”. These survival role characters may not offer significant damage boosts but possess resilience against high-pressure situations. Characters like “Rakshasa” and “Fu Xuan” fit this category.

For the main DPS roles, consider characters with keywords like “single-target multi-hit damage, multi-action mechanisms, high single-target skill multipliers”. Since “Chaos Memories” has turn-based requirements and tests your damage output, characters with multi-hit abilities have an advantage. Characters like “Xi Er," whose ultimate deals a single hit, may struggle if they don’t achieve critical hits consistently. On the other hand, characters with multi-hit abilities like “Jing Liu” calculate critical hits separately for each hit, requiring only a few critical hits to outperform single-hit characters. This is why “Yinyue” and “Jing Liu” are popular choices in “Chaos Memories,” as they have high appearance rates. Single-hit characters require a critical rate of 90/170 for dual critical hits, while multi-hit characters only need 60/200, providing a higher damage cap with critical rate traded for critical damage.

Exchange Items

Clearing “Fictional Narrative” and “Forgotten Courtyard: Chaos Memories” allows you to obtain the new exchange item, “Bi Yu”. You can exchange these for valuable items like “Self-Cultivation Essence” and “Relic Fragments," expediting character growth.

Thoughts on the “Fictional Narrative” Mode and Implications

After trying it out, I was drenched in sweat by the time I reached the third floor without practicing Black Tower. On the fourth floor, I quickly equipped Black Tower with a decent set of relics, and I easily scored 40,000 points, carrying the lower half with Cafuca to resolve battles. However, I found it quite amusing that the lower half of the fourth floor had a rare weakness to fire and thunder, but the DoT (Damage over Time) team couldn’t do much in the “Fictional Narrative” mode. The small enemies were either too fragile and died without applying DoT, or they died too quickly. It felt like a waste of DoT opportunities. In all known modes, DoT possibly only shines in “Simulation Universe.”

From this mode’s perspective, regardless of whether the 2.0 version has a strong impact on the meta, it’s clear that for permanent Starry Corridor teams, the Abyss’s weather patterns will inevitably change. What’s frustrating about the Abyss’s weather isn’t whether there are alternatives for specific mechanics. It’s that once you go against the weather, everything becomes difficult. The “Fictional Narrative” mode emphasizes intelligence, which I can understand. After all, intelligence has been overlooked for a long time and needed some attention. However, the deliberate design to bypass destruction and turn the new mode into an intelligence-exclusive endeavor is too evident. It’s reached a point where intelligence is the primary choice, and even if destruction is good at it, you almost have to use intelligence because of the issue with indestructible middle units.

Once this mode is introduced, it’s bound to enter the Abyss mode with weather patterns like the “Third Abyss,” where every character has a niche. Playing intelligence characters in the “Fictional Narrative,” destruction and hunting in the Abyss, and introducing a new mode specifically for DoT characters. This way, each character will find their optimal role, and it seems like a win-win situation. However, in reality, it places further demands on players' character rosters. To excel in a specific mode, you cannot neglect training certain types of characters. Even if a character isn’t relevant outside of a specific mode, you have to train them; otherwise, they’ll be a liability in that mode. This indirectly suggests that the balance between characters has been abandoned by the numerical designers, opting for a design that requires specific characters for different scenarios.

“Starry Corridor” indeed lives up to its name, and its essence is truly unique.

Defending the Beauty of the Galaxy

Is this another worldline calculated by Scholar Zhang?

Intelligence, it’s truly something.

Because I don’t have Silver Branch, I’ll use Ji Zi… Sis as a substitute.

Starlit Iron, whether it’s optimizations or gameplay, has always been designed to make players have fun.

Especially this new “Fictional Narrative” is a paradise for Intelligence characters. Coupled with the BUFF for this season, there’s an instant feeling of clearing everything.

Not to mention, this season has an Ice and Fire weakness, which is simply a paradise for Black Tower + Ji Zi. I guess later tonight, you’ll see a bunch of videos where Black Tower + Ji Zi effortlessly clear the content.

“Spinning, spinning” -> “Can’t escape” -> “Spinning, spinning” -> “Can’t escape”…

Invincible, how else can you describe it?

Looking at this direction, there’s space for group characters to shine outside of the Simulation Universe.

Moreover, this new “Abyss,” each level only requires 6,000 for full stars, but they’ve set an upper limit of 8,000 for you. It’s like the official has set a threshold to ensure that average players can achieve full rewards, while providing a challenge for high-level players.

Don’t use Clara, she’s too inefficient.

This round is about feasting with the group, sipping soup as support, gnawing bones when going solo, and Clara is squatting in the corner, picking ants for her own amusement.