Quality of a Photocard

Dear Class, welcome to Lecture 02, Prof. An here. I am glad that you were able to finish the first lecture and I hope you got to know more about the photocard system, please do not hesitate to ask questions or point out my mistakes. I am just a messenger that translates the ideas from the textbook to you all, so it is essential that we have an active classroom atmosphere.

Today, we’re going to talk about the QUALITY of a photocard.

Please feel free to SKIP this lecture, if you DO NOT care about the Shrine mechanics. If you solely collect Photocards for collections’ sake, the QUALITY of a photocard does not affect your experience besides a different number on the top left of the card.

Now some curious students may ask, what if I DO care about the Shrine and want to maximize my ODDs for success? Then I strongly suggest you to stay seated and I am going to cover exactly that.

First of all, let me give a definition:

Definition 01:

The QUALITY of a photocard is an integer in the CLOSED interval [1,10]

For an interval to be CLOSED, it means the endpoints are included. Hence, the quality of the card is ONE of {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10}.

Or if you really wanna go fancy and flex your math knowledge, you can also say that the interval is closed if and only if the closure of the interval is itself. But hey! This is NOT Real Analysis so I don’t care.

Example 01: This Sailor Gaeul below has a quality of SEVEN (7), as denoted on the top left.

Before anything, I am going to provide you with the standard Rate of Offering because I’ll be mentioning things about it VERY frequently in this lecture:

There’re mainly FIVE situations where the QUALITY of the photocard is Useful:

1. To Flex to your friends or to your Mommy.

2. To REDUCE the chance of failure in a Shrine offering. (*Exclude Wisdom and Power)

3. To Tier Up a card you offer to the Shrine (*same as 2)

4. To provide a LOWER BOUND of the Quality of the output card in a successful offering (*Restrictions apply, see lower for more details)

5. To contribute to the Mystery Number you’re supposed to solve in the Shrine of Wisdom.

To be more clear, I shall demonstrate EACH situation with examples and Exercises. Buckle up, it’s gonna be hell of a ride.

Situation 1: Flexing in front of your friends or to your Mommy

Nothing much to say here, simply show your crush this:

And say, “Hey! I have a Quality 8 Gaeul 007! Do you have time tonight?”

Or show this to M… ahem… Prof. An:

And I’ll prob award you with Extra Credit in the Final. Damn, I look good in this outfit.

Situation 2: To REDUCE the chance of failure in a Shrine offering.

The description is pretty much self-explanatory. In Shrine of Health, Love, Fame, Fortune: the higher the Quality of a card offered, the LESS likely it will fail. Disclaimer: the MAIN factor of success or failure still depends on the type of the Shrine, and the impact from the Quality is NOT significant.

That is, a Quality 10 card in the Shrine of Fortune (which is the MOST difficult Shrine amongst the four above) will INDEED decrease the chance to fail, but expect something like from 50% Success to 60% (10 % for Q10) instead of a Guarantee of success. Since I am NOT the admin of the site, I cannot provide the exact number here.

One sentence summary using myself as an example:

“An Yujin 001, Quality 10 is more likely to succeed in an offering compared to another An Yujin 001 with Quality 1, under the assumption that the same type of Shrine is offered.”

Exercise 01:

My dear students, below is an easy exercise for you to test your understanding on this topic:

Which ONE of the following FOUR cards is LEAST likely to FAIL a Shrine of Health offering?

Solution: Liz 002 with Quality 9.

Hey, if you were able to answer this correctly in the first try without looking at the answer key? Good boy~ (Or Good Girl!) That means you’re a master in this subject, keep it up! Smart students might already be able to tell, which is something REALLY important:

QUALITY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RARITY!

Please forgive me for the all caps, but I believe that’s a really important thing to keep in mind :P

Alrighty, let’s move on.

Situation 3: Quality 9 and 10 Cards Tier Up

I believe this is also straight forward from the topic. If you offer a Quality 9 or Quality 10 card in the Shrine of Health, Fame, Love, Fortune, it counts as TWO copies of its original tier!

Without further ado, Professor An myself did an offering of the Shrine of Health, JUST for you all, my lovely students~. Please watch the embedded video below:

Please notice that, in the ORIGINAL Rate of Offering: 2 Common = 1 Uncommon!

BUT! Based on the description, since my Hayoung 001 is Quality 9, it counts as TWO copies of Common when I offered it to the Shrine of Health! Therefore, the output I received is an Uncommon Karina 002.

Situation 4: Lower Bounds for Same-Tier or Lower-Tier Offering

It may be a bit confusing here, so I shall explain this part using 3 examples.

EXAMPLE 1:

In this case, this user offered a Rare Heejin 003, Q8 and received a Rare IU 003, Q9!

This is NOT a coincidence, because the Output is the SAME rarity as the input. This means it is a Same-Tier Offering! Thus, it triggers the “lower bound” mechanic. That means the output will be GUARANTEED to have AT LEAST the Quality of the Highest Quality card you offered!

The definition of lower-tier offering is similar, although it is really rare to see at this time as now there is a warning if you attempt to Shrine some certain high quality cards!

EXAMPLE 2:

This case, the Shrine ONLY considers the HIGHEST rarity AND quality you offered to it. Hence, the rarity of the input is considered as Rare due to that Hyeju 003.

And the QUALITY of the input is considered as 7 from Heejin 001.

Thus, the output triggered the “lower bound” protection, yielding an Eunha 003, Q8 (8 >7).

EXAMPLE 3:

This is NOT considered as a same-tier offering, because the RARITY of the input is Common (From Hayoung 001), but the output is Uncommon (Karina 002). Thus, this does NOT trigger the Quality guarantee and resulting in Karina 002 with Quality 2.

Please do let me know if you have more questions on this topic, otherwise I felt like those 3 examples were pretty straight forward.

Situation 5: The Shrine of Wisdom

It is a very scary topic to talk about, as many high-valued cards were burnt. Salute to the pioneers who attempted to figure out the Rule of the Shrine of Wisdom BEFORE it was released! Your sacrifice shall always be remembered.

That said, I will dedicate an entire chapter on the Shrine of Wisdom, please attend future lectures!

I believe that’s probably it for today’s lecture. I hope you all were able to get more understanding on the Quality of a photocard and its usefulness under different circumstances!

Before I let you go, I received a few feedbacks and apparently some of my lovely students enjoyed calling me M… hmm? How cute?! Stay after if you want to confess your little thoughts in your head, I am very open-minded! Or please bring your questions to my Office Hours, I am more than happy to answer them~

See you in the next lecture, which I’ll introduce the main ways to get photocards on Fanprose! Please take care and I’ll see yall soon!