Houghten

*leans on cane* A'course, it were easier in them days. Y'only needed a hundred grand to take any girl from no stars ta three.

...ah, never mind.

So, after the patch, what effect will already-used affection items have? For example, I present my situation with Kalissa: From the patch notes: The affection's requirement for Starter Girls will be 90/225/563/1125/2250 for the grade 1 to 5 I got Kalissa fairly late in the game (unsurprisingly), and have upgraded her to four stars so far. Her current total Affection is 19,805. After the patch, will that 19,805 remain and be enough to fill her bar up to 2,250 (and then some) ready for her fifth star, or will I need to upgrade her from 1125 to 2250 still?

Your bizarre classification system is truly baffling to me. Missions are daily quests for PvE? That makes no sense. PvE stands for "player versus environment" and there is zero "versus" component to missions. (Technically, there's a versus component to contests, but you have to focus so hard on contests to win them that either you play the rest of the game, or you play contests.) Also, "linked" and "part of" aren't the same thing. Story missions aren't part of the PvE just because you need PvE items to progress them (even if you hadn't already collected a full complement of drops before the first area quest is halfway over because one's faster than the other). I think that if a lot of people didn't play Epic Pachinko, or otherwise find a reason to buy kobans, the game would wither and starve from lack of money, so yeah, but even if they didn't it wouldn't actually stop being part of the game, thanks to the daily free spin. I also feel compelled to point out that you were the one who started ranting about how half of the game is irrelevant. Is it even possible for an OP to derail their own topic? Especially when it's titled "My Thoughts"?

Story content, affection upgrades, money collection from your harem, daily missions, pachinko...

I think you mean the other ten percent of the game. Maybe twenty at most.

I didn't keep an exact count, but it cost me about 7500 kobans' worth of refills - about 700 paid fights, plus the free ones. Meanwnile, H.A.L. I managed to get with free fights before the end of the second day

What does it mean, "there’s a risk, he does harm"? Will he knock off XP or stats for every battle I don't get her?

There are no boosters. Just keep repeating until the random number generator says "eeyup."

Nope

Well, for a data point from the other end of the spectrum, it took me three events before I got my first drop.

I'm quite surprised there's no shot at Santa Claudita.

72-point font isn't really sufficient for me to express my discontent with that, but BAH!

I thought you were supposed to be guaranteed an event girl if you do the 10x epic pachinko during an event? Did they drop that?

Not all that glitters is gold, Stang. She might look like a normal human woman in her 0-heart picture, but who's to say she won't transform into a shapeless mass of pulsating, acid-slick fleshy spines the minute your back is turned?