The amount of ANGER i feel when my operators decide to stop attacking a nearly dead enemy for another one that just got blocked. Mostly it's not a big deal, but when it causes a leak.....

Thumbnail: I will talk about corners for half the video. Me: SOLD

7:40 "Where does the circle operator go? That's right; on the square tile!"

14:58 pause deploy works on android devices in general, as it's tied to pressing the back button, emulators just happen to conveniently bind it to esc in most cases. However it's kinda annoying on most actual phones as you usually have to swipe out from the edge and then press the back button (by which point it's probably faster to just deploy). Edit: Since people were asking, this wasn't a thing in the EN server for a very long time, but got readded during the executor alter event, JP has always had it as far as I've known

I remembered during stultifera navis with the boss on early stages has a very light weight and is only gonna walk on one straight line going bottom then going left then upwards to blue box. i saw a clip where it was blasted away by weedy and the push and pull gang to a path where there has its own blue and red box but its a path that the boss dont usually take in. After it flew off in that lane, he simply ceased to function. Literally stopped walking and just stared until its life ended with many phases. It piqued my interest for a moment tbh since its the first time i saw it but that kind of map is rare since the separate lane is secluded and doesnt have any other way out. Normally, when enemies shifted in different lane, they would try and go back to their normal route to the nearest location possible.

The whole blocking part, especially the part where you threw Damazti in, reminds me of a very peculiar bug I had in IS-EX-7. Croc Hitman got blocked by Cuora, got pushed upward a bit, then disappeared and reappeared somewhere else.

To add to 11:12. Operators also don't start attacking until briefly after they're deployed. However, some operators like Nearl Alter activate their skills and attack immediately on deployment, but they also don't have the invisibility, so enemies can also start attacking them immediately

JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK We gonna be streaming IS5 soon

12:40 Blemishine is the exception, she hits sleeping enemies over blocked enemies (for some reason)

I guess one thing to add which is less applicable for 4-star due to its lack of burst, but some bosses that have an invulnerability trigger from a health threshold can have it delayed if the threshold is reached during the casting of another skill. For example, recently with Harold you could ignore multiple if not all of his thresholds if you burst him when he was setting up the skill that doused the furnaces. With him it is very tight but with damatzi the skill is much longer to be able to offset an invulnerability state.

I wonder if the playtesters know of these things, also abuse them, and try their best to prevent HG from patching the "useful bugs"

WOOOOOOO I love Arknights spaghetti code! I have yet to understand how Irene switched targeting in my CC12 clear RANDOMLY when enemies get blocked by Heavyrain. As you said, I recall that blocking causes enemies to change position relative to closeness to blue box, but for some reason Firewatch was consistent in changing to new blocked enemies, but Irene was rng reliant. I can't believe this video just gave me ptsd of that uh.....

Never noticed that blocked enemies went clockwise and counterclockwise after the first, interesting stuff.

12:39 cmiiw, but i believe i read somewhere that blemishine's "attack sleeping enemies first" goes above blocked enemies

10:47 I have a speculation: This might be the true difference between melee and ranged operators. Ranged operators can only attack enemies within their range whereas melee enemies can attack enemies in their range and the ones blocked by them. Since blocking enemies normally doesn't splitbox them, the dog did not enter May's range, and May does not attack the dog because she is a ranged operator and does not attack blocked enemies.

Another intresting gimmick is about bosses with damage thresholds. Since they check their HP on non animation phases, characters like Degenbreacher that dishes out massive damage on a quick time duration can go past the bar and kill them without triggering the treshold phases. (This is most easily seen on bosses like Herold or Steamknight) This DOESNT apply on bosses like talulah where they gain a buff below 50% hp. Emperors blade also has a weird interaction, he has treshold domination releases that CANT be bypassed. You can kill him in a single shot and he will still release all the domains back to back. Quite weird

how about those weird enemy pathing that bypass operator on corner(that one prisoner stage tile)?

Kill-gating is prevalent in a lot of low stars clears, because it helps delay a lot of needed DPS and HPS that low stars struggle with. I also always wondered why sometimes ranged ops shoot targets that are blocked at the very edge of their range and other times they don't. Ops are circles.

Great video, the blocking section was wonderful also helps me understand why now and then I get "untargetable" mobs for melee to hit I feel. But that might play more into what others call "half tile" or w/e.

In principle a float point error is a rounding error. Fundamentally it's an error stemming from binary representation. Values are stored in a number of bits, depending on language used, and a finite number of bits means only a discrete number of values can be represented. So any value that isn't exactly representable will be shifted to either the left or right (hence floating).

I know about these just by feel, always good to know more about specifics. Didn't know the shifting of blocked enemies are done clockwise/counterclockwise like that, I thought it depends on the RNG seed thing. Also didn't know ranged operators don't attack the enemy they block if it's behind them, another entry for my Arknights trivia list esc on emulator is just back button on phones so phones can pause deploy and I've used it myself, this is definitely a bug that turned to feature thing since a long time ago they disabled this mechanic, only to put it back in the game a few patches later. Who knows maybe they'll disable it again 🤷‍♂ Usually the technique is used when the skill timing is tight, maybe need to activate Myrtle as soon as possible because if one's late even for just miliseconds in deploying the next operator an enemy is gonna leak. Another would be to deploy an instant-skill operator on top on an enemy and use their skill without getting hit by the enemy first, think of dropping Chen skill 2 before she gets hit by the enemy she's blocking, this is probably the best use of pause deploy since its impossible to be fast enough for some enemies. There are other reasons I can think of but comment got to long even I myself would probably not read this Some if not most just do it for no reason tho, maybe out of habit. (realest)

The killgate stuff actually gets used quite a bit on H8-3 low op clears, and I've abused it to make WD-EX-8 significantly easier. Fun stuff.

Sprit of the law arc

At around 11:30 ish, you mention that operators when deployed have invisibility to anyone not blocking them briefly, but there are cases like Taxes (and I think only her?) where they don’t have this window as well, or it’s at least much shorter. Could be due to her on deploy effects occurring much faster than others, not really sure why. Edit: Also, I *think* pause deploy can be done on androids as well, although it’s been years so I’m not 100% certain. I believe pressing Escape is the same as hitting the “back” button in the hotbar (which Apple doesn’t have), which pauses the game even if your finger is deploying something else. That’s why it didn’t work for a while when Yostar decided that the back button now tries to leave the level instead of pausing it, only to finally fix it after a while.

Just got into Arknights last week, your videos are a great, bro.

I wouldn't say those are the key mechanics that game should be explaining, wich is what the title suggests, those are more of advanced quirks in how the game works that the community found for themselves to make their lifes easier. It's still pretty cool and shows how deep Arknights gameplay can be.

The fact that ops and enemies use circles for hitboxes and not squares explains *many* of the problems i have had...if only i had somehow figured that out between now and launch😅

this distinctly made my head hurt just like how i first started playing Arknights and malded over trying to learn difficult stages and mechanics (and also reading the lore) so this is already a genuinely good AK video to watch 👍 jokes aside, this was actually super interesting and insightful and while some of them i subconsciously already knew since i figured them out while playing AK organically, it was cool to see the specific coding and rules that the developers implemented being exploited unintentionally here through trial and error. i definitely dont understand nearly most of what you explained of how it works (and the math definitely did not help my very little braincells) 😂 but at least i learned something!

Hey dude, new subscriber, love the video. that age of mythology music was a real blast from the past.

11:00 Blitz can switch targets when he starts blocking a new enemy, I assume it's due to his talent that they gave him the ability to to that so he can prioritise attacking stunned enemies, so based on the fact that they attack the ones closest to their center first, I assume when the enemy is fast enough, they can get into his hitbox further before blocking and thus he changes targets and it can be kind of random, depending on the frames

Interesting AF video. As someone who tends to play AK more casually, it surprised me how many of these mechanics I have in fact picked up on over the years even though I've never seriously paid attention to them. A goo 3/4 of the video was me going "oh yeah, I have noticed that before. I didn't realize this was exploitable".

I hope more videos like this get made. EN has a serious lack of documentation on details of mechanics. There are good discussions in Discord servers like Lungmen Dragons but Discord is horrible for archiving because it can be hard to search and there's no assurance of long-term preservation. CN documentation meanwhile can be hard to find unless it circulates in EN communities, and there's no guarantee Google Translate will convey all the nuances correctly.

Hmm, I suppose it's a rare enough occurrence, but I was expecting a mention of ground operators in walled off ground tiles (like Howling Desert) still being able to block enemies that cut their corners. Great overview all the same, cheers for putting in the effort it must have taken to produce this 👍

Pause deploy is useable on any Android device that has a way to interact with Arknights and press the system Back button at the same time. I have a physical button on my phone that's bound to Back and I use pause deploy habitually. A somewhat-related bug is that if you deploy a bunch of Operators all at once only frames apart with pause deploy (or macros, etc.), enemies won't always target them in the order you deployed them. I think it's because some Operators have a different deploy animation and only after that are they considered deployed, so the last Operator deployed could have the fastest animation and be considered deployed first. Gave me a bit of a headache during Pyrolysis.

Big thanks from a newish/returning player!

Ah, Kill Gates! My favorite is CW-EX-8's spaghetti code kill gate that can get skipped by doing the equivalent of a lost voodoo ritual. So, you can skip the time between enemy 46 and the wave after him, having both spawn simultaneously, but you need to kill boss after the 12 defenders spawn, then kill the defenders before X happens, then make sure boss 2nd phase survives till enemy 45 spawns, lest it all goes to naught, then... :D

Very informative. Will be trying this for sure.

that mines trick only working on every second tile... could be banker's rounding at work (where if exactly .5 it rounds to the nearest even number)

In the new event stage TG-8, i find it really weird that the enemy going from the lower right corner some get pushed up and some get pushed down by robin's bomb right after exiting the red box, without turning any corner, slow, etc

I was always wondering last time if the non-roadblock stages with tanky enemies (like bosses) that have pathing, can be pushed into the other route and possibly softlocking them into their new position by using these methods -make them get pushed and moved into the opposite direction by using an operator to block them -use pulling force/ pushing force AT the same time they are being block-pushed -then use passive slowing (Mostima) or Suzuran's S3 and repeat the method of being block-pushed and getting a pulling/pushing force

now i have become smart, the destroyer of vigil.

Welp guess that explains how sometimes I see enemies automatically splitboxing themselves even though I didnt do anything. And man when this 15:18 is applicable, it is such a strong tool to abuse to have all your units ready for the next phase.

i didnt understand a thing u said but sounds rly cool

"Music Used: Like Half The Age of Mythology OST" Extremely good music choice.

"Great, Dr. Silvergun just uploaded a new video! I can't wait to feel utterly inadequate at this game :D"

I'll definitely use this in the future

The irony if the strongest shift in the game being to stop the enemies in place is beautiful

I am a brain dead doctor. most of the time I cannot even remember what enemy would come at what time or how much damage a certain operator do to certain enemy. so yeah this kind of mechanic would just confused me if Dobermann-sensei trying to explain how to use them to me.

25 seconds ago is craaaaaaaazy

12:43 Lol, for a second I thought this was from an actual clear

hey i wanna know something, when i did a prisoner's nights my centurion blocked an enemy behind her, but she only attacked that one enemy even though there were many enemies in front of her. i thought centurion attacks enemies as many as their block count?

Thank you

I understood almost none of this, but I'm sure it was useful info for people who are actually good at the game

This video had almost enough Deepcolor in it.

Interesting! Useful info that I will most likely never make use of. lets just help the algorithm.

13:44 Hg please I find this so annoying bc where's the consistency and logic behind telling whether a ranged enemy still does ranged attacks or switches to melee when blocked if their attack animation is still the same. Executor alt on s2 can dodge melee attacks and I've seen it happen with casters like the ones that do cross damage but then I tested on ch.9 dublinn snipers and he never dodged a single attack ?_?

This is some college level discussion about how things work on a Chinese Tower Defense game. Im intrigued.

Nice

me when mechanics and i six star operatro spammm (but srsly good video as someone who sometimes tries hard)

Did you ever end up making a discord?

i feel like schwarz double shot should be in this vid, must-know for schwarz users certain ops can empower their offskill attacks if you activate their skill while one of their projectiles is airborne. whatever buffs they receive from the skill will be applied to that projectile, and if their skill resets their attack interval, they can effectively fire two empowered attacks at once applicable skills include anything with +atk% buffs or increased crit chance, but not attack scale buffs like horn s2. this tech is especially useful for ops with high attack intervals like typhon, provence, and magallan('s drones) for schwarz in particular this gives her an entire extra shot on s3 (13 > 14) and allows her to fire one empowered arrow at an enemy outside of s3 range, making her probably the best use case for this tech

I didn't expect this sort of content from you, I watch this sort of content but usually from like Rewrite Kuma. add some puns for 'humor' to spice up the video. Doesn't have to be good or high effort, just spice it up a bit. you are coming out of this very serious. and I know this if from years of game experience and you know what you are talking about, I just want some puns thrown in here to spice it up.

also why zebra 4:29

I love the video, but i can not understand you sometimes

Damn, I love videos like this, literally about nothing and yet about everything at the same time

to add to the list of things game doesn't tell you but should... centurion guards attack equal to block count, not all blocked enemies summoners get their summons back when redeployed blizzard effect and poison haze? only last 999 seconds surtur is a dumb slut you can push ch13 enemies into the blue box so the respawner of blood doesn't target them while harold targets the furnaces for the cross shaped nukes you have 2 seconds to burst him and avoid multiple phases of the mapwide nuke