Another Eden

Note: This is a title screen update, so will be available 24 hours from the time of this post, and all content will be available immediately on update.

This update is expected at the same time as weekly shop reset, so don't save those until after the update, but if you do want (marginally) extra opus chance, buy the last set of 5 reds before the update and enter a red key dungeon before update time so you don't overcap. No need to save green keys.

• Log-in campaign: Special 3-day login bonus to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, with login stones increased to 300 each day from 27th to 30th September.

• Astral Archive updated to add 5 Tomes related to Main Story Part 1.5

• Astral Archive updated to add Tomes related to character events such as Chance Encounters and Awakenings - More powerful versions of fights that challenged you on original release!

• 12 more character quest sets added to the Replay Story feature.

• Parallel Dunarith is available in summons, and his Dream Weaver opus available from red key dungeons.

• Fateful Encounters for Dunarith and for Parallel allies available.

• Encounter for characters featured in quests that have been added to the Replay Story feature.

Next update expected on 6th October, including an AS for a 4* character, and a manifest for a much neglected (until recently) 5* character!

Title screen update - Will be available for download within the app from approx 24 hours after the time of this post.

• Wanderer in the Binding Night: Edge of the Vortex requires the subquest Blackbird to be completed.
• AS Melody will be available in banners immediately after updating, and her Medea treatises will be available from dungeons at that time.
• Fateful Encounters available.

Next projected update: 26th September, with a new Parallel Time Layer encounter and more Astral Archive challenges added.

So my SDE pick is gonna time out soon, and I'm kind of at a loss for who to pick. I've narrowed it to the three mentioned, but am unsure which way to go.

Yakumo seems particularly risky with his self-harm mechanic, so I'm thinking that his isn't a great YOLO choice.

Iphi is a shade setter, and has the blood contract thing that should help me with bosses (I'm not a power player by any stretch), while Sesta is a powerful nuke and wind setter.

Does anyone have any (all?) these characters and able to offer some more insight? I'm F2P outside SDEs, so getting characters is very random for me.

Note: This is an app version update, so check your app store for the update to access the new goodies, and of course make sure you have data coverage and device space.

• Felmina ES banner will be available 24 hours from the time of this post, but her Erinys codices will be available from dungeons immediately after updating.
• Felmina ES's very cute small friend doesn't appear to actually be a sidekick, but is very good regardless.
• Fateful Encounters available for those interested in such things.
• Myrus True Manifest available immediately after updating.
• Get Varuo the hat and cape he's always dreamed of in the Claude cat set.
• More (another 18!) character quests added to the Replay Story feature.

QOL adjustments:

• Your HP, MP and AF states after fighting an Astral Archive boss will be returned to the state they were in prior to the fight.
• Rewards for Challenge difficulty in Astral Archive can now be checked prior to achieving the requirements.
• In the Party screen you can now filter characters based on multiple criteria (!!).
• Noahxis is now less tsundere and wil show you the conditions required to have him join your party. These conditions have also been relaxed.
• Wanderer in the Binding Night Episode bosses have been restrained and are no longer as difficult. The bosses can be rechallenged at their original difficulty after having cleared.

Catch-up Campaign Part 2 - OOPArts edition:

• Supply Drop of various OOPArts and 100 Dig Medals in your inbox after logging in.
• Decreased Dig Medal cost of trading OOPArts by 20% for campaign period (Until catch-up is achieved).

I'm not 100% clear on what this bit means since it seems contradictory:
*Added the ability to obtain the items received upon defeating the pre-Ver 3.2.100 boss by defeating it in the rechallenge. Players who have already obtained the rewards will not obtain them again.
*The amount and type of rewards have not been changed between versions.

Next projected update: 15th September, with two new AS characters (One free, one gacha) and some new Wanderer in the Binding Night content.

Okay, I'll admit it, I'd lost track of time and thought this was coming next week, so seeing the Twitter notification come through took me by surprise, ha.

• Title screen update - This will be on the same version (3.1.700), so no store update required. The update will be available this time tomorrow.

• The item required to upgrade Benedict to 5* will be available after completing Ensemble: Commander and Sheep.

• Elseal will be available to summon immediately after updating, and her tomes will be available as drops from Miglance Castle Another Dungeon.

• Astral Archive Challenge mode allows you to fight powered up versions of bosses for a set number of turns and aim for the highest possible damage scores, with rewards available for each score threshold reached.

• Campaign: Clear any one Challenge difficulty boss (no minimum score threshold required) before 30 September to receive 500 Chronos Stones.

• Start Ensemble: Commander and Sheep during the campaign period for an increased reward of 100 Chronos Stones.

• Login reward increased to 50 Chronos Stones for up to 12 days (25th August - 5th September)

Next update date: 6th September UTC, bringing a new ES and a True Manifestation!

More questions, more answers!

Title screen update, so restart your app at this time tomorrow to access the update, of course making sure that you have the data and storage for the download.

Note that this will be the same time as weekly key shop update, so make sure to buy any remaining keys before this (if you plan to use them!)

• Premaya AS (Devotroid) will be available for summon or upgrade.
• Paid Fateful Encounter for AS Devotroid will be available, as well as paid Fateful Encounters for "Earth Force Edition" and "Main Story Special Edition".
• Minalca reissue banner, at a 1% rate.
• "Encounter The Ways We Walked" available. 3 times max until 29th August, with only the following 5*s available; Radias, Yipha, Felmina, Bertrand, Victor, Laclair, Anabel, Elga, Lokido and Mariel. Looks like one of them is guaranteed on 10th pull.
• Manifestation added for Ruina AS.
• Round 1 of character quests added to the Replay Story feature. 21 characters added at this point, with more to come in subsequent updates.
• Beginner difficulty added to Main Story Part 3.
• Increased bearing drop rates for Standard - Master difficulties in Main Story Part 3 (presumably Beginner starts with a boost already in place). Since this is listed separately from the Catch-Up Campaign, presumably it's an additional permanent increase.

Catch-Up Campaign!

• Duration: From this update until we catch up with Japan.
• Main Story Part 3 Progress Campaign: The drop rate of Bearings will be increased x1.5 for all difficulties (excluding Another Dungeon).
• Grasta Awakening Campaign: Amount of Fragments, Crystals and Git required to Activate and Awaken Grastas reduced by half. Excludes Jadeites and personal Grastas.
• A set of Grastas and Badges will be delivered to all players as a one-time gift, including Enemy Encounter- Badges, Git+ Bages, Power of Pain Grastas for each weapon type, and a supply of Fragments, Crystals and Jadeites.

User Survey: A survey will take place, running from 15th - 29th August, asking for player feedback. Every player who completes the survey will receive a 10-encounter Destiny Token (No rarity guarantees, but hey, it's free!)

Next update is expected in a bit over two weeks this time, on 30th August, including a new Ensemble, a new character, and a 5* unlock for a long-suffering 4* character. Stay tuned!

(As an aside, I hadn't previously noticed, but the ease with which post titles can be changed here compared to Reddit is fantastic. Kbin still has a lot of work to be done, but this kind of QoL is much appreciated)

The team have announced the intention to keep up updated with a monthly Dev Letter, starting with this one! (If anyone wants to post the individual images, go for it. Multi-image posts please, kbin!)

Stay tuned for the full details of tomorrow's update, in a few hours.

This is one of my first fanarts for Another Eden and in digital art (2020). I thought I'd repost it to celebrate international cat day! (Apparently 8/8 was chosen because in the northern hemisphere, it's the time of year when cats are most likely to be in heat o_o)

According to the wiki, we have almost 150 cats in the game. Good luck catching them all!

I have mentioned before how extremely impressed I am with pages such as the Japanese SDE guide that has not one but several "Meta" lists, including an environmental characters and equipment summary that lists excellent characters across sensible roles such as general DPS, attribute-specific attacker, support, and even "tank".

The individual character pages are also astonishingly good, imho - e.g. Sesta's that, aside from translation difficulties, offer great support to newer players. Explanations as to the major things to look out for (in multiple forms, some for beginners and more advanced advice separated out for veterans of the game), exact party line-ups that can work well, exact listings of several pieces of suggested equipment, including thoughts requiring deep knowledge of very fine-grain technical artifacts of the game that would otherwise require direct testing (e.g. in her case, that Enhance Normal Attack grasta does not work, which is not mentioned on the global wiki at the time of this writing), etc.

Like for a veteran player who left the game for a year and returned, such a person could stare at one of the character pages on the global wiki for an hour to get even deeper knowledge as to how they work, and then still be left guessing what other characters exist that could work well alongside them, but these pages get you a significant fraction of the way there, very quickly (which is what most people want from a guiding resource? well, at least casual players do).

But that much is obvious: what I am wanting to mention further today is that there is so much more to the Seesaa wiki than even all of that! That wiki btw is where the global wiki gets the Superboss ranking list, but even so I had no idea that also the specific enemy boss pages are also so helpful! Such as the one for Land Avatar & Crab Bonze. The global wiki version has some weaknesses and moves each turn so I am not claiming that it is empty or useless or anything like that, but in comparison the Seesaa wiki's has just so much more! e.g., the distinction between a merely "large" physical resistance debuff vs. one that is fully ONE HUNDRED PERCENT, renewed each & every turn - and that written in red lettering to really draw attention to that fact, so that you really know what you are up against. Then, scrolling down, I see strategy, an entire long description of multiple parties that would work, turn-by-turn descriptions for them, alternate approaches for those bored with the easy way and want to mix it up a bit, and even direct links to videos to watch some of those in action.

I think most non-Japanese-reading people do not know about all that is available on that site b/c of the rather large difficulties in interpreting the translation. e.g. you cannot just type "Eva" or "Yipha" into the search box and find who you are looking for, and often the names differ in spelling. A particularly troublesome example is that the wind-based Yipha is sometimes called Efa, and other times Eva, which can be confusing! However, even with those significant barriers to understanding and using the site, these days I still find myself visiting the Seesaa wiki as my first stop oftentimes to look up information.

The same writer akashic_lin apparently also made the superboss ranking list (or at least made the last edit, but I am unable to see prior to that for whatever reason). All of that enormous body of work (you can see their contribution logs by clicking their username) must have taken a GREAT DEAL OF EFFORT!! And I, at least, want to say that I appreciate it. I do not know if more than a handful of people will read this, and even then how many will make it to the end here:-), but I did want to offer that regardless, just in case someone was interested in hearing it:-). (yet sorry not sorry, I will not crosspost this to Reddit, b/c it would instantly be drowned out by accusations that I "hate the global wiki" or some such nonsense, as my own contributions log should be well more than enough to dispel any notion of but... you know how Reddit works:-)

akashic_lin, I wish to extend to you my public thanks for your extraordinary efforts on behalf of the players of Another Eden.

Presumably iOS update is also up by now.

Let those download bars roll!

Important info: From Early September, iOS versions earlier than 12 will no longer be supported.

• This is an app update, so keep an eye on your app store approx 23 hours from the time of this post to get the goods.
• Start saving red keys if you want more chances at the new Opus. Green keys are safe to burn.
• Badge Exchange update! Added function to choose which badges to exchange, as well as function (On the Item screen) to lock badges you don't want to exchange.
• Super cute Lokido kitty gear!
• New encounter: Crimson Reaper Ilulu, and her sidekick Limil! (Such good kitty ^.^
• Fateful Encounter: Parallel Time Layer Series
• Encounters will go live 24 hours from the time of this post, but other content will be available immediately after updating, as well as Opuses (Opii?) for Parallel Ilulu.
• As has been standard for Parallel character introductions, the first quest will be available without having the character, commencing in Acteul. Chapter 13 of the Main Story must be cleared first.
• New content: Cradle of Time! Begins in the Spacetime Rift, but NOT autoplay this time.
• Cradle of Time requires chapter 25 of Main Story (Part 1) to be complete, at which point an event icon will be available in the Spacetime Rift.
• Help the researcher, and earn rewards including Chant Scripts!

Next update: 15th August, expecting an AS and a manifestation. Would redact for spoilers if we had that here, so just omitting names for now :)

Note: Spoilers related to Apocrypha Ch 6 in this thread.

By the way, there is an older discussion thread on Apocrypha Chapter 5 here if you're interested (which also has spoilers).

(SPOILERS BEGIN HERE)

Warning, long post!

Well, I think I had mixed feelings about this story, but I thought it'd be worth discussing because I know some people really liked it.

The story immediately introduces you to Yakumo as extremely unhinged, having just committed a mass murder by destroying a KMS building with his boss and coworkers inside. He proceeds to also kill Aldo, at which point time loops back.

We see Yakumo again in the past, this time as a quiet, reserved and docile character. He prefers to avoid social contact if possible and lacks confidence in himself. As you progress through the story, you see that he's kind of a beaten down, down-and-out type of person. He's bullied around and berated by the section Chief at KMS, his position in the company is in question due to his performance and poor fit for his role. Rather than doing research as he originally applied to the company, his manager puts him in charge of a sales role. And because of his shyness, he doesn't have personal connections to others which might help alleviate his difficulties in the company, whether through having an advocate for his career or someone to commiserate with. Although he hates his job, he knows there are no other opportunities because KMS took over the market so that there are no other companies to work for. In his personal life, he lives in Dust City where his boss relocated him, a sort of ghetto / wild west. Even when he tries to find a minor reprieve by grabbing a meal, he's victim to beatings by thugs for fun because the city is controlled by gangs.

He takes it as a matter of course because he's internalized a lot of negative thoughts about himself. He comes home exhausted, but finds no rest in the knowledge that the next day will come soon and bring more bad experiences. Since he comes home so late, he also doesn't have time for leisurely distractions like a TV show of a popular idol that many people enjoy. He feels trapped in an endless cycle of futility and anxiety, whom White Phantom finds as a perfect pawn to use to trigger a recurrence in this time layer. Phantom gives life to Kumos, the company mascot that Yakumo designed and is forced to distribute to the businesses of Dust City.

Although Aldo and Nona try to help him to try to do his job, he ends up being fired by the section chief for failing to meet his performance goals. He's in a state of shock and outrage that after all of his efforts to do his job, it was meaningless. Because Yakumo values little about himself, the only source of external validation he has is taken away from him (being in a reputable company, albeit in very poor work conditions), as well as the means to support himself, meaning he won't survive anyway without a job, so nothing matters. He is outraged and in a near-giddy state because there's nothing left restraining him from acting on his bottled up anger. This is where we find the context for him going on a killing spree. At some point, he's also gained superpowers through Kumos, and Kumos eggs him on to use them to get his revenge.

At first, I found it hard to sympathize with his response at first, since it reminded me of certain mass shootings in the news which are tragic and senseless, and innocent lives are lost. After thinking about it, I think some of those killings fit more under the category of hate crimes, whereas this event is more reminiscent of the phrase "going postal". Aldo and Nona find Yakumo to be reserved and even a kind boss towards them, but his job forces him into a corner to become desperate.

This Vice article describes the origin of the phrase "going postal", where in the 80s and 90s, US Postal Workers lashed out through occurrences of mass shootings in various postal offices, especially against their managers, and killing coworkers as well. In an aftermath of one of the shootings, one of the coworkers said, "In my mind, it could have been anyone," and "I understand why he did it". What contributed to these postal office mass shootings were a toxic work environment and the strained relationship between authoritarian managers and workers. Although I don't want to downplay an individual's responsibility in this, we can see that there are real-life examples of this occurring, hinting that it's more than just a problem of one individual, but a societal or organizational problem. For every person who lashes out, there are many more people who suffer quietly in these situations, and just stopping these individuals doesn't address the original problem or environment that caused it. I think it's also worth mentioning that this story has special relevance in Japan, which has a widespread problem with work life imbalance and overworking. For a global audience, it may be less relatable what forces or pressures society places on the individual of another culture, but traditional work culture in Japan pressures people to work extremely long hours and neglect their personal health and family, leading to even "karoshi", or death by overworking. Also, Japan places great importance on putting on politeness and appearances (it has a shame-honor culture like many Asian countries), so it becomes more difficult to express your true feelings. So rather than stigmatizing the feelings that workers experience, fiction can be a helpful device for expressing these thoughts in a safe way to reason about them, rather than repressing and hiding them for society's sake.

There are more twists and turns in the story, but Yakumo finds his happiness doesn't necessarily seem to be fulfilled by the time loop:

• He loses against Aldo and Nona and even ends up dying. Meaning he doesn't get to live to see tomorrow.
• He sees his section chief die by jumping into a wormhole, but it doesn't give him relief.
• White Phantom welcomes him to trigger the time loop, but it only makes Yakumo upset at being used.

All of these upset expectations make him confused and think twice about what he really wants.
Finally, he realizes that he just wants to be able look forward to tomorrow, which doesn't necessarily require him to trigger a time loop (aka, a very polite term for committing mass murder).

So he finds that the external solution he initially thought would bring him happiness doesn't necessarily do that. He has to look within to find his answer. Earlier in the story, you see an example of this idea. He looks for the popular "Drinko Joy" which promises happiness and a "better" version of yourself. But he realizes he doesn't want it because it's not true happiness if you can't be yourself. It's more like a hyper caffeinated, manic version of yourself. He runs into a young man who's devastated that they ran out of the drink, because he has social anxiety and feels that he needs the drink to be able to talk to people. But Yakumo tells him that he doesn't need the drink to be happy. The young man realizes that he's been talking to Yakumo this whole time and has done so without the drink.

In the same way, Yakumo realizes his happiness didn't come from trying to control the outcome of the future. The future can't really be controlled, as he found out (and from observing his future self). Controlling tomorrow was just an illusion of control, the same way that "Drinko Joy" gave the illusion of being a better, happier person. But he looks back on the time he and Kumos laughed together and realized that that was a brief moment of happiness in his life. He finds that there are a lot of things he still can't control, but he realizes his problem was a lot simpler than trying to control fate and destiny. By acknowledging that he wanted to be happy, he could finally look forward to finding those moments in life, and thus hope for tomorrow.

I'd been ignoring my desire to be happy. I'd been acting like I didn't even want it.

This kind of reminds me of a Zen Buddhist koan (a type of paradoxical story meant to provoke reflection and show the inadequacy of logical reasoning to arrive at enlightenment or truth) called "The Tiger and the Strawberry".

You can look it up, but basically the story goes, a person finds themself chased by a tiger. They encounter the edge of a cliff and climb down a vine to escape the tiger. They look down and see a ravine, where yet another tiger is waiting to devour them. Looking up, there is a mouse that begins to gnaw at the vine holding the person. Then they see a strawberry growing off the side of the cliff. While still holding onto the vine, they take the strawberry and eat it. It is delicious.

The story has no solution to the predicament the person is in. Reasoning alone is inadequate to solve a situation that can't be solved (i.e., the inevitability of death), and so you are unable to find a solution. However, it is possible to reach a type of acceptance and acknowledgement that it is possible to find happiness in that place.

I think Yakumo arrives at a similar conclusion:

After all that's happened, I'm still just me. Work hasn't changed. My personality hasn't changed.
Still, I have no choice but to live like this.
I'll have to keep searching for happiness within this cage.

Although one could argue his life changed because of his superpowers, he did try to use them, but it didn't help his predicament. Also, one could argue that his life will get better since his boss is gone. That is true, and there can be much gained by changing your situation to make you happy, but I think the point of the story was that the kind of change he wanted came from looking to his own happiness than trying to change his situation (some of which are beyond his control).

After the true ending, he found that he slept peacefully. Light is shining through his window. He acknowledges that even though he has problems, he remembered something positive:

I get angry and sad every single day. But, sometimes I laugh, too. Like yesterday.

Then he uncharacteristically gets up to go to work early. He doesn't know how to explain it. Kumos is surprised, to which Yakumo replies:

I just feel like it, I don't know. Maybe we could grab breakfast somewhere.
So many strange things have happened. I think I went a bit insane. And now, I...
I'm sort of looking forward to what today will bring.

Yakumo (陽雲) means "daylight, the light of the sun" (陽), and "cloud" (雲). Hence the name of the chapter, "The Breaking Dawn".

True to his name, Yakumo has found a light of hope.

If you made it all the way to here, thanks for taking the time to read this post.

What do you think, did you enjoy this story? Did you sympathize with Yakumo? What do you think about how the section chief treated Yakumo after the reveal that it was future self? That was weird. I feel like I didn't quite grasp this story very readily, so other opinions are welcome. There are a lot of things in the chapter I didn't mention here due to the length of the post, but we can discuss those as well.

I'll admit I had a lot of trouble thinking about this story, and his casual deliberation about mass murder put me off, but I think it was well done, and it required me to think a lot about the story to understand the meaning. At least he admits he thinks he went a bit insane. However, I did end up liking the interactions between Yakumo and Kumos. I thought it was funny every time Kumos slapped him on the back.

In-game notice says that this was fixed as of 5:35 UTC.

And 7DE has Zeviro, Parallel Isuka and AS Shigure, but I doubt anyone is too fussed about that XD

I LOVE (note the present tense:-) Chrono Trigger. Chrono Cross is... not quite what I was hoping for in a sequel (it was not bad, it simply did not scratch that itch). I knew that Another Eden also would not be the same, yet it did seem the closest thing to it in spirit.

Thus when I started this game I decided that I wanted to be a completionist and grind my way through everything in it. So I went forward super slowly - I'm now >2.5 years in and I have not even started Main Story part 3 yet:-) - and like I got enough materials to upgrade every weapon and armor in the entire game, finishing out one dungeon entirely before moving on to the next, which I felt was true JRPG style even if it runs counter to how modern games are played. I even completed Otherlands before moving on to get grastas (mostly - I did take a bit of a break by overlapping them some). As you can see, that process took awhile to complete! Like, I did not move forward past PGAD until I had gotten all of the non-repeatable grastas from it, and same for AGAD, and so on.

So now it is very personally satisfying that I completed the final enemy kill achievement for content that existed when I first started. Every alarmed monster, every small mouse/gecko, every mob/horror/boss etc. I am considering Superbosses as a separate line of thinking although I am pretty sure that I accomplished that too - even without grastas I was able to tackle those, then with mere T2s I took on some more, then with T3s but no P/P or ores some more, and so on. I prioritized less the ones that were harder to access, like if it takes a minute to physically walk over to it, then it can wait!:-P Shout-out to the Power Creep chars that made that fairly painless: most often I completed them on the 1st, 2nd, or maybe 3rd try as a result, even as under-equipped as I was - like AS Tsubame cheesed all of the present & ancient Garulea demons that do not resist (or null or absorb) earth blunt, and ES Tsukiha 1TAF'd all the rest even without the opportunity to get into her more powerful form. Later I even managed to pull a modern DPS in Alma, but most often for the likes of e.g. Kudang or the emperor reborn from the first mythos she cannot even get into her Trance state yet before AS Clarte killed it already, no need even for AF, and AS Milsha completely (or mostly?) negated all of their damage plus Clarte innately has Hold Ground so... it was all super easy once I had pulled those gacha chars and decided to give the fight a try. Therefore I thought about going back to and re-doing those earlier ones with purely free characters, but there is always so much to do and that also is not a high priority - maybe one day!

In the meantime, the best part is that there is still so much content left to do!! By taking it slow like this, e.g. doing Otherlands and fishing and such, I still have much of the new content that has and continues to keep being added - like now that I have finished GoT2 I can complete the second Mythos that I was able to start but was not able to go beyond chapter 6 until finishing most of GoT2. And the the rest of harpooning awaits me, plus all of the cool new stuff (boating and sidekick gear and reforging and whatnot) presented along with Main Story part 3 - which by the time I start there may be a second wave of new content even:-) - and also I still have yet to visit (even once) the ADs for Purgatory, Iscariot, Sapient Complex: Midnight, Sea of Ice, Toto Theater World, Omegapolis (that one I need to finish all the non-repeatable grasta sets from Underworld first before I bother unlocking), and the latest one Warped Cochlea. The latter I think I will bump up to the top of the list b/c I am currently farming Nona so it fits.

I have definitely taken an unusual route through the game compared to most people it seems, but I am okay with that and I am enjoying what it has to offer. :-)

Edit: maybe you too would like to share your unique perspective on this game, to help get this community started? We do not have a post every day - and that is okay:-) - so we shall have to collectively figure out what we would like for it to be. Right now the small numbers offers both unique challenges as well as opportunities that would not have been possible at all with Reddit - like if 20k members were to post their personal stories it would have become quickly overwhelmed, plus multiple memes every single day, and the veritable TSUNAMI of questions (most of which could be solved by a 5-second lookup on the wiki) and bragging and salt - there would simply be multiple hundreds of posts (quite possibly over a thousand, no joke) every single day, but this place is different. The Kbin interface is buggy, the Federiverse is confusing, but we at least are here, so what shall we decide to do with it? :-D

Not sure whether anyone here submitted any questions to the Q&A, but the answers have now been published. Enjoy!

pic

The picture only shows Rinde Sunfish, which is the rarest of all, as previously I finished all the horrors, Silver Carp, Rolling Turtle, etc. and yet this straggler still took months all on its own:-).

As a newer player when I began this long road (which ultimately took TWO AND A HALF YEARS for me to complete!), it was really fun to chart my development in the game as I learned better team-building skills. e.g. the only water chars I had at first were like 3-star Cyrus and 4-star Nikeh iirc, so it was really useful to learn that Violet in an earth zone could 1-shot the lake horrors better than trying to exploit weakness using pathetic DPS characters. And then as I got AS Tsubame and m!NS Felmina I developed new 1TnoAF approaches even for the upper set of lake lords, b/c when you need to do something hundreds of times (like in order to get 150 Silver Carp I got 320 Sky Serpents along the way), it is good to keep it as simple as possible, like only one button press and someone to make skills cost 0 mp. Especially since I lacked grastas for like 2/3rds-3/4ths of that journey (as I put all my green keys towards finishing Otherlands).

I enjoyed the ride, but wow I am sure glad it is over too... (that way, I can start in on doing the same for harpooning - groan!).

This is a thank you art for @niantre for supporting me on ko-fi and made my day!

They requested this character and ngl the whole time I was thinking Nonold's big sis (not canon to my knowledge). But anyway I had fun with this and hope you guys enjoy it too!

Similarly, it will presumably play immediately when you first move to the Rift if you weren't there on log-in.

So much for updating and closing while I get work done!

Note: This will be a title screen update (surprising considering the new mechanic being added), so go ahead and buy this week's shop keys before the update. All content will be available from the usual update time (ie 24 hours from this post).

• AS Pizzica will be available to summon, and her Erato treatises will be available immediately after updating

• The Astral Archive unlock event will be available in the Spacetime Rift

• Rewards from the Astral Archive include equipment, badges, Chronos Stones, Chant Scripts and even sidekicks!

• Each Tome will have a boss to fight, which is available in both Hard and Very Hard

• At time of introduction, up to 1,800 Chronos Stones will be available in Astral Archive rewards

• Fateful Encounter Recollection: The 3000 Realm Ark Series is available, paid, featuring NS and AS of Pizzica, Milsha, Mistrare, Thillelille and Rosetta

Campaign: Repair any one Astral Tome by 24th August for an additional 190 Chronos Stones.

Next update expected on 4th August.

This was a collaboration with NoWaifuN0Laifu based on his design, where he wrote a character quest for ES Hozuki and imagined her as a crystal element hammer user - "I made ES Hozuki’s quest (feel free to use WFS)". On a whim, I offered to draw his design for him.

You can see 2 other images on either link, a full-body view and the prototype designs:

• pixelfed: https://pxlfd.plus/i/web/post/587951629771305271
• pixiv: https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/104285179

You may have already seen this, but I thought I'd share it here on kbin since I deleted my posts on reddit.

This was kind of tricky for me because I had to improvise a lot on the design. I had a few prompts, like "beautiful black and purple kimono", but they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that was five words. So I had to research what kimonos are like, and learn about cultural things like don't draw the right side over the left, because you only do that for dead people, etc. I watched a video where someone showed how they put on a kimono. They're really complicated to wear, but interesting nonetheless.

Looking at it now, there were some things I wish I fixed, but by then I wanted to be done!

One thing I wanted to mention is that in this drawing, I tried out the bloom effect where you imitate the way light bleeds when you use a physical camera. It tends to make things look softer and more full of light. You've probably seen it in anime here and there, or video games. I didn't know how it was done and always wanted to imitate that look, so it was intriguing to try. I couldn't do it too much in this piece though, because I already ~~abused~~ applied glow dodge to a lot of the drawing and it would have made everything look too washed out. If you're interested in how to do it with Clip Studio Paint, You can see this tutorial video by Manu Mercurial (timestamped at 11m14s).

We are one month in on the Another Eden magazine, and I think that's a good time to take a moment and check the temperature.

We are growing, with new content being posted regularly, and I have to thank all of your for your efforts. Threads, comments, upvotes; all of these contribute to the community and are important to building the sort of space we want on Kbin.

Now, a few comments have come to me about content and keeping a healthy environment (for discussion, as well as our members).

When it comes to content, as long as it is related to Another Eden in some way, it's on topic - that includes the story, characters, head canon, fan art, fan fic, or even the state of gachas in general (if AE is reasonably referenced). That's not an exhaustive list. As an example of off-topic or not acceptable discussion, anything that violates copyright or would open the magazine to legal repercussions, please refrain from posting here. Discussion of this content, if done tactfully, is on topic, IMO. Additionally, meta discussions about this community are always welcome.

As concerns cross-posting to or from /r/AnotherEdenGlobal, if the content is your own, by all means go to town. If it's not yours, please get permission from the creator. If you want to encourage people visiting the magazine, that's also cool, just be nice about it. Whatever the platform, let's be respectful of the larger AE community.

For how we interact, I've been considering some options around a Code of Conduct, or community rules. For a starting point, I'm suggesting we adopt the Contributor Convenant. We can make adjustments (this was originally created for open-source development communities), but the bones are good, IMO. It puts responsibilities on us all as community members, as well on leadership to enforce the rules and represent the interests of the community.

On the note of leadership, I am calling for those interested in being mods on the magazine. I freely admit that I'm not a gregarious person, and while I'm not afraid of enforcing rules, I'm not the best candidate for building the social aspect of our community. Additionally, personal events this past week have shown me that I am not a safe choice as a single point of failure (as owner and single mod, I am very much in that position). I realize kbin currently lacks mod resources, and we're not currently seeing situations requiring moderation. However, I'd rather have the network setup before we need it.

So I've done a lot of talking, and I want to hear what others think. For me, this is our community and we need to grow it based on open communication and consensus - to be clear, that doesn't mean we all agree on everything, just that we have no clear and rational objections; I'm happy opening a separate thread on this topic.

Some specific topics we should consider:

• How do we want to handle spoilers? @niantre has a thread with a simple solution; do we want to adopt that until kbin gets spoilers working?
• Do we want to allow sensitive (pornographic, graphic violence, slash fic, etc) content? What subset of items are/are not acceptable? If yes, how do we respect everyone and their desire to avoid this content? To be clear, if we can't find an acceptable way to balance these needs, we won't be allowing sensitive items in the magazine - external hosting without preview is an option in that case.
• Anything else you want to see in the community.

For a few days, the AE Twitter will be hosting a Q&A corner , in which "Producer Koike will answer some of your questions about the Episode "Wanderer in the Binding Night," the future Global Version, & more!"

Questions can be posted in replies to the linked tweets, and will be received up to 3pm UTC 23rd July.

Not all questions will be able to be answered, but if there's something you want to know, this is your chance!