F/GO Watch!

Hmm, I can definitely see why Heracles is a top 4-star. If it's mostly just the Berserker class thing, I did manage to get Lu Bu, maybe I can start leveling him up. I did also get 2 copies of Cu Chulainn, so I'll put him in as my Lancer if you guys find me and don't want Martha.

Is Lily so ineffective that I'd be better off using Saber (Gilles) over her, were I to put a Saber in my lineup?

Lu Bu is definitely a solid three star, really any damage focused Buster Berserker is pretty great. There are support Berserkers coming later but, uh, they function about as well as you would expect. And then Vlad seems mediocre now but once Tamamo releases Vlad/Tamamo/Waver is a super legit setup. Cu is also one of the best three stars in the game, dude is hilariously unkillable.

Lily might be bad, but the only thing Gilles has over her is that he costs less to put on a team. The gimmick they tried to pull with him with his Np turning him into a pseudo-Berserker is kind of neat, but it doesn't function well at all in practice and he sucks in almost every way. There's a much better version of that concept coming in London with Jekyll and Hyde too.

Hilariously unkillable? The same guy that dies so often they mock him South Park style? ("You're not human!" "You bastards!")

I'll probably end up saving my quartz for after chapter 4. That's where Lancer (Altria Alter) will be, yes?

Yep, that Lancer. To be fair he is very durable, he just has some of the worst luck of anyone in the series. And yeah, Chapter 4/London is when she will be available. About two weeks after it launches there will be a rate up for her as well if they do it like the Japanese version.

Zero covered it pretty well, but I'll echo his own words: Lu Bu is essentially a budget Hercules, so if you don't have Herc but have Lu Bu and want a solid boss killer/dps, run him if you can keep him alive or equip him with a CE that boosts his NP gauge to 30-80% so you can fire it off faster.

Two copies of Cu will put him at NP level 2, which is pretty good. And yes, Cu Chulainn is known as a cockroach in the game. His dodge procs with three hits, instead of lasting a turn or two or proccing after one hit, and that's his first ability. His second skill is battle continuation, which is essentially auto-life. And his third skill is a self-heal and self-debuff cleanser. And all his skills have relatively low cooldown timers after you get them past rank 6, so chances are that if you've got him past level 50 and ranked up his first two skills to rank 6, he's not going down for a long time. Plus, his NP has a low chance of causing auto-death on his target (waaaaaay lower on servant enemy NPCs, but it still happens), and if they don't die, they're hit with defense down after damage is calculated. It's a running meme on the F/GO reddit that CuBro is the last man standing and finishes the fight after everyone else is dead against a tough boss.

As for Lily, the only reason why she's really bad is because she's got lackluster stats for a 4 star and some choices for her active and passive skills that make no sense. There are some 3 stars that have stats equivalent to her. These low stats means that she doesn't hit as hard for her cost on a team, and her NP damage is pretty poor. Her active skill set suffers from this (she's got automatic crit stars for her first skill, and then her other two skills are a buster up self-buff and an NP charge up self-buff), but on top of that, she has a passive skill called Riding, which increases the effectiveness of her Quick card attacks by 8%. It's a good skill by itself, because it increases the damage of the Quick card attacks from that servant and I believe it also increases the amount of crit stars generated by said attacks; but Lily only has one Quick card in her attack deck, so it's underutilized to the point of being almost irrelevant. Saber Wars made her a bit more playable, but only for her NP, because you could boost her NP to level 5 in that event (and that event also made her a free 4 star for players at that point), which increased the damage it could put out to respectable levels. But you're still better off with Saber Alter or Nero as a 4 star Saber.

That aside, I'd take Lily over Saber Gilles any day. He's only good as a support using his skills, and not much else. His stats suck, his NP is not even worth using, and he's of limited functionality when there are other servants who are 2 stars who do his job better. He's trash, don't use him, just keep him around to level and raise bond with so you can grab materials that drop from his interludes and strengthening quests.

Vlad is essentially an Arts-based version of Hercules with slightly better stats. But he's not going to shine until you get at least his second skill, otherwise you're going to need to work to keep him alive. But yeah, Zero's right about pairing him with Tamamo and Waver: solid early Arts meta comp that has high DPS from him, while the other two both sustain everyone, pump NP into everyone, and debuff the enemy to keep them from firing off their hard stuff and make Vlad's attacks hit even harder. If you have him, though, you should pump him up past level 20, if only because his attacks won't be blunted by Ruler Jeanne Alter's passive resistances to everything but Berserker, Ruler, and Shielder.

Lancer Alter Artoria (F/GO reddit tends to just call her Lalter) is a story-locked 4 star in Londonium (chapter 4), so you'll either need to clear that chapter to make her available in the story gacha, or wait for her rate up that Zero mentioned. She's a lot like Salter (Saber Alter Artoria), in that her NP hits harder than expected for a 4 star, and her skill set also contributes to the party. First Londonium servant rate up is Jack, who's the only non-limited 5 star Assassin in the game thus far, and one of the best ST NP boss killers. She's also crucial to any successful Quick Crit star gen-based team composition. A Quick chain involving her, and especially her NP, generates an easy 30+ crit stars, and her crit star absorption rate is really good, so you could easily keep generating crit stars each turn and critting with Quick attacks every turn once you get going. Bosses and enemies melt under that. So you might want to keep Jack the Ripper in mind.

Oh yeah Jack is fantastic. A seriously good team can be (Insert your favorite servant)/Jack/Waver. Jack provides the stars for crits, Waver provides the meter and buffs for both damage and crit damage, and then your servant of choice beasts.

Alright, despite it not being a Lancer day (that's Mondays and Thursdays with Assassin, I think?), I'm going to farm the EXP quests and get Cu Chulainn leveled up, probably first Ascension too. The next question is what Craft Essence I should be putting on him if I put him out there as my "All" Servant (which I'm sure is the one most people take). I do have the NP+30% start 3* CE, but I also have a 4* (100% ATK-focused boost) CE that increases Critical Strength by 25%.

Just as a note, "Critical Strength" isn't what it sounds like. It doesn't increase damage from crits, just the rate at which they produce stars. As a result, that CE isn't particularly good (Although if you have nothing better then it works well enough). The translation job on this game is sloppy to say the least, misspellings are everywhere and there are baffling skill translations among other things, like Medea having a skill called Rapid Words of Divine or Jing Ke having an NP called Just, Kill.

Oh yeah, I haven't mentioned it yet but my ID is 904,519,456 if anyone wants a level 40 Martha support.

Whew, I start running the Advanced quests for EXP, and I'm suddenly flying through ranks, doing them over again, getting more ranks, and getting lots of EXP boosters. Not only do I have Cu Chulainn at first ascension, but Lu Bu too. Hell, maybe I should even go all the way with Martha at this rate, though I can't wait to go through this process with Carmilla (I doubt even seeing Heracles' awesome might will turn me away from picking her).

Just started doing the 20 AP Exp quests, and it's helping in pumping up some of my servants (I'm in the second half of Orleans at this point, though I just beat the node with Phantom of the Opera as a boss, which was a pain. Hans held me out and won me the fight. FREAKING HANS, A SUPPORT). Think I'm going to get my party at or above level 20 before I continue on with Orleans. Shouldn't take too long, thankfully.

As for some of the translation BS that's going on, it's really odd. The stuff in Orleans is actually pretty good, but Fuyuki and some of the summon lines and names of skills are so janky. At least it seems that the translation is improving for the story as you get into the actual chapters.

Also, the translation for Orleans has made me fall in love again with Marie. Glad I rolled her and Liz. She's got a meme on the reddit board involving her talking "urban". XD

Yeah the translation in Orleans improves a baffling amount, it's super weird.

ZeroStormZZ wrote:Yeah the translation in Orleans improves a baffling amount, it's super weird.

Someone on the F/GO reddit responded to a post I made regarding the translation and localization, noting exactly this. They mentioned that it's entirely possible that different teams worked on localization of each chapter, which might explain how some parts are above average and of good to great quality, while others feel like they were put into Google Translate and used from there.

Oh wow they make it super clear in the Rome chapter that Nero is one of the Beasts.

ZeroStormZZ wrote:Oh wow they make it super clear in the Rome chapter that Nero is one of the Beasts.

Potential to be one of the Beasts.  Her Beast manifestation is the Whore of Babylon, which in Revelation was in reference to the title of the Roman Emperor and whomever was occupying the throne.  Which Nero was when Revelation was written, I believe.

There was actually a really good fanart on the F/GO reddit where someone did a version of her manifested as the WoB.  I'll be sure to link it tomorrow, as I did save the thread on my reddit account.  For now, time to sleep.  >.o

I mean yeah, technically it's just the potential but you don't hint at that in a story chapter if you aren't going to do something with it. There's also the fact that the name Mother Harlot was in the servant datamine from ages ago. I just want to see if she will be able to do that thing the Prototype Beast can do with reviving and corrupting defeated servants.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7upYSrm8txQ

PV for the new chapter in the Japanese version, Drake Alter confirmed! Saving my quartz was not a mistake.

Drake as in Sir Francis Drake? Interesting, but unfortunately too far away for me.

Hell, Scathach I hear is pretty far away as is, and Minamoto (RAITA Berserker woman) even further than that.

Yeah. The normal version of Drake is in the next story update though, and Scathach isn't terribly far away from what I recall. Minamoto is though.

Drake Alter?! And from the looks of it, hot as hell. O.O

Also, the Agartha Caster is almost assuredly Scheherazade from 1001 Nights. All things considered, even if I did get Kiritsugu, I now regret spending two extra 10 rolls on trying for Raikou.

Here's hoping I'll be able to get Agartha Caster.

As for Drake, after hee first interlude to increase the damage of her NP, she becomes one of the best AoE NP 5 stars in yhe game. Excellent damage that also generates a great amount of crit stars for a Buster attack. Somewhere around 20 or a little more, if I'm right. Slap a CE on her that increases critical star generation and you're looking at some monstrous damage after she drops her nuke. I would recommend rolling for her when she's got a rate up on Okeanos's NA release.

Scathach isn't far away, maybe two to three months at the most. But she'll show up after Okita and the GudaGuda Honnojii event (if the NA servers run that, and I don't see much reason why they wouldn't).

Critical star generation, is that what my "Gemcraft" 4* CE does with that "critical strength" boost?

Yeah.

My bad for not responding on you mentioning Mother Harlot. Yeah, the data mine has her listed, so I'm hoping to see that sometime soon. And it'd be pretty hot if she had that ability.

I'll be out for a while, but when I get back I'll link the fanart of Nero as Mother Harlot.

Okay, here's the fanart of Nero as Mother Harlot that a fan did.  It's a sketch, but a pretty good one in my book.

https://i.imgur.com/rnRrxeg.jpg

And the thread from a few months back on Reddit that featured it. Came out right before the CCC collab.

https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/68gddi/my_very_simple_guess_on_how_mother_harlot_umu/

Funny enough, the artist made Nero look sort of like her mother Agrippina, despite never having read the Fate/Extra manga or seeing an image of her before.  Still sexy as hell.  :3

Just as a note, in the Mana Prism shop there are 5 summon tickets, which can be used for rolling. Each one takes 20 prisms, which at the moment is a fair bit, but you can sell silver and gold exp for a prism each. These tickets usually restock at the beginning of each month, so I think it's better safe than sorry to try and grab as many as you can before July starts in case they do restock.

For the JPN version, they're guaranteed to restock. For the NA version though, I think they're probably going to hold off on adding any more until at least August, so everyone who came in at the release has a chance to get enough Prisms to buy at least the tickets. Right now, the prism shop in the NA version has the amount of time to buy each item listed as "a year or more".