I keep mixing this up, so I’m going to write it down in hopes it sticks this time.

• crafted gear (courtly lover set): 770 base, 780 augmented. We start the tier with full crafted. Augmentation is not available on tier release and we usually don’t bother with it, but we are very late in the tier. It’s done using tomestones from previous patches & certificates of import.
• tomestone gear (bygone brass set): 780 base, 790 augmented. Augmentation can be done using glazes/twines from raids OR alliance raid currency OR nuts. Normally we rely on raid drops, but we’re struggling with dps and will likely need the upgrades to beat the third floor.
• raid gear (grand champion set): 790 base.

BIS is generally a mix of augmented tomestone gear & raid gear, with the exact mix dependent on substats.

In a typical tier, I’m slightly confused but able to muddle through on my own. This tier I was very confused, and also confused at my own confusion (did they changed it?? my egg). The answer is, nothing has changed. I’m just too lazy to fully optimize my gear so I’m not familiar with all the systems (specifically, augmenting crafted gear and the alternate methods of augmenting tome gear). But I have a rough handle on things now.

Anyway, I got a couple upgrades before Saturday’s Red Hot & Deep Blue reclear, but my parse went down by 1%. Tch.

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Also, now that I’ve caught up on the alliance raid plot: Prishe is an interesting counterpoint to the Living Memory debacle, except the writers were too cowardly to engage with the implications of their own story. Just like the inhabitants of Living Memory, Prishe is not biologically alive, but a simulacrum created with the memories and personality of a real individual. The narrative completely assumes her personhood. Like, of course she’s the WoL’s friend and trusted battle companion and we hope she’s gonna be okay despite the increasing instability of her levin core. I don’t mind assuming, but why did we not afford the same grace to the inhabitants of Living Memory?

You might say, “Living Memory is distinguishable because they required vast amounts of aether, which was fucking up the planet’s lifestream and incentivizing its rulers to go on wars of conquest to procure more aether.” That’s true, but it was only part of the narrative justification. The other (equally loadbearing) part was that the inhabitants of Living Memory were Unnatural and Bad for continuing to exist past the lifespan of their biological bodies, and they Weren’t Real People Anyway so it was morally fine to pull the plug. Why does Prishe get to be a person while everyone in Living Memory is a statistic? It is a mystery.