Talents

On my roster are five Inazumans. In terms of four-stars, one is a housemaid who I'm still trying to fit into team comps that require a decent Shield and can apply Pyro consistently. Another is a Tier-3 Archon simp who's got multiple copies of all the hot Shogun merch that can possibly exist in the market and felt kinda clunky to fit in a team comp before I got two of her Constellations. Now she's... still a bit awkward to fit in the combat flow, but is a bit easier to use at least. The last four-star is a wind-powered Sonic the Hedgehog expy who's been surprisingly consistent at not only applying a -40% Elemental Resistance debuff upon foes that have the misfortune of running into her, but is a scarily competent Healer who can top off her team's health with a single Elemental Burst, as well as regenerate Energy rather quickly. In terms of five-stars, I've got an almighty Hikkikomori who's been immortalized on the Internet as "that anime girl who pulled a whole-ass sword outta her cleavage (she's most likely far from the first one, but I digress)", and a devious fox lady whose Burst cost is as expensive as her dining fees. I'm not sure why I described the four-stars so eloquently in contrast to the fivers, but what's done is done.

Anyhoo, you might be wondering why the hell I even brought these five characters up. What's my beef of the day with the five inhabitants of the Electro Nation? Well, I've been perusing my Inventory for their respective Talent Books, and have found my Backpack overflowing with Inazuman Talent Books. I haven't had to farm for a single Teaching of Transience or Diligence, because I've tirelessly scoured the nation of its treasure chests and emerged from these raids with Talent Books practically pouring outta my ears. And that's not even getting into limited-time Events that have offered piles upon piles of Talent Materials on top of all the other sweet loot you get from them. However, despite the abundance of all these Talent Berks, I've encountered a roadblock when it comes to a certain type of Teaching. Just a few seconds ago you might have noticed that I've never had to farm for Teachings of Transience or Diligence because blah blah treasure hoarding blah blah generous limited events (you get the idea), and yet one Book type eludes me. Well, I guess it's not so much that they "elude" me so much as my characters devour these books like the Electro Archon at a candy store. If the answer isn't obvious enough already, I'm talking about Light books.

Amusingly, Talent Books of the Light variety drop at about the same rate as the two other Talent Book variants, so it's not as if the game is biased towards dropping a certain type of Talent Book just to spite me (at least I don't THINK so, but knowing RNG's relationship with little ol' me, that might very well be open to debate). However, the worryingly rapid consumption of these Light Books courtesy of 60% of my Inazumans got me thinking: is there a lore explanation here? Is there an in-universe reason for my most frequently-used Inazoomers to be chomping away at my Light Books faster than I can replenish them? There're currently four Light readers (pun somewhat intended) in the game, three of which are on my roster. And when I inevitably roll for the Geo family pet when he rates-up on an upcoming Banner, I'm most likely gonna be welcoming him into the Inazoomies as well. And when that happens, I'll be in possession of every single Light Booker in the game as of this game's current version. To put it into perspective, I have exactly ONE of the three Inazuman Transience Bookers and ditto for the Elegance Readers: the housemaid and the Shogun-servant. Probably not a coincidence that they're both four-stars.

I suppose the fact that I have both five-star Light Book readers does shine a light on what kind of Inazuman I pull for, which then made me wonder: is there a reason WHY these people enjoy reading the same thing? What can a millenia-old shut-in, the infamous head of a publishing house, a writer working in said publishing house AND a slothful shinobi all possibly have in common? Am I simply reading too much into this? Maybe some dude at HoyoVerse simply threw a dart at a board to decide which character of the month would be using which Talent Book? I truly do not know, I ain't got insider information. But if it IS indeed the latter case and they're just matching the latest characters to the latest Bosses and Domains with no rhyme or reason, is there really a lore explanation behind it? Let's get into it.

I'll have to put this train of thought on hold, but you best believe I'll be coming back to it. Yelan and Shinobu are on the verge of release, and I believe I can milk their lore/talent correlation for some content, so if you don't mind, I'll break it off here and pick this topic up sometime in the future. Thanks for reading.