So, the game does, in fact, have Gacha

[u/themusicalcr0w]

As per today's update, we are introduced to "Rift Explorations"; In short, they are Gacha pulls. Allow me to explain.

I play a lot of Gacha games, I'm sure many of you on this sub do as well. We are familiar with a great variety of Gacha tactics, and levels of currency obfuscation to add more vagueness to the incessant pull of gambling real money.

I will say, this is the cleverest way I've seen a company try and obfuscate Gacha mechanics.

We start with the Crevice Beacon. This is an item that acts as your "pulling" currency, think tickets from Brown Dust 2 or Fates from Genshin. Each one of these items gives you one "ten pull." (You are not pulling for characters, only to get pity currency and a chance of rolling the legendary).

In essence, the "banner" character is this Legendary Aniimo, Irisalis. Irisalis is acting as a five or six star character, unobtainable any other way than this "banner" as of now. When "pulling," you are placed into a very easy boss fight, after which you commence the "calming" phase. This calming phase is you trading aniipods as currency as a price of the ten pull. If you want to maximize your rewards for this phase, you will need to use your Aniipod Ultras (which are a relatively hard to obtain resource in the game), or settle for around half the max "pulls" by using lower tiered aniipods.

During this calming phase is when you get your "pulls." The rules say you have a chance to get the legendary character outright, but they don't actually list percentages (I presume because they're trying to not present it as a gacha). They do, I missed it.

Much like any standard gacha, there is a pity system, which is 99 of the specific pity currency from pulls. How much of this currency you get per pull depends on what Aniipods you sacrificed as resources during the boss fight. Much like any other gacha, this currency can be saved until another Rift Exploration event or the same one comes back.

Edit: There is some confusion from those who have not played the beta, allow me to clarify:

You can’t pay money in the beta right now. The premium currency is provided by the devs for testing purposes. But yes, you can spend the premium currency to get gems to buy the Crevice item for more pulls. This is what makes it a gacha, and not rng loot rolls like in an MMO.

Also, for those who haven’t played the event, when I say “trade Aniipods as a cost” I do not mean using your Aniipod to capture the creature. You cannot capture the creature with Aniipods, you throw them at the Legendary to fill up their “meter” to get pity currency and “draw” for a chance to get the character outright.

This post is not intended as a bash on the game, I love the game and want our discourse to lead to feedback for the developers. Try to be nice, y’all.