F/GO Watch!

Still only on the First Singularity... How far in should I expect to be able to get at launch?

On launch, there's three chapters that are available: Fuyuki City, which is the prologue; Orleans, which is formally Chapter 1; and Septem, which is Chapter 2.  Chapter 3, Okeanos, will likely be released in two to three months' time (likely somewhere around llate August/early September) if the timeframe for the NA version is the same as the JPN version, but a month earlier.  Otherwise, expect Chapter 3 to come out around the end of September to early October, and Chapter 4, Londonium, to come out early December.  In between those (again, if the NA version is going to closely follow the JPN version) are going to be minor campaigns and some events, namely the Moon Festival and Nero Olympics before Okeanos, and GudaGuda Honnojii and Halloween events before Londonium, with the Christmas event happening a couple of weeks after Londonium's release.

The rest of the chapters for "Season 1" and all events in between them (Kara no Kyokai collab, Dantes Dungeon, Da Vinci Fake, Valentine's, Fate/Zero collab, Summer event, Prisma Illya collab, the rerun of the first Nero Olympics/Halloween/Christmas events, and new Halloween and Christmas events, not to mention a bunch of campaigns and strengthening quests) will all take place next year in 2018.  The NA version is almost two years behind the JPN version, sadly (the JPN version came out in mid-August of 2015, I believe).

Mmm, Darke Alter with a very sexy and positively evil makeover, sexy boots and all, I'm in love all over again <3  Also really love that rendition of Whore of Babylon, really fits what a evil Nero would be to a T =)

Also, hope Scheherazade(new Caster) keeps her veil.  She looks great without it, but I just love that mysterious allure...  It's akin to glasses for me.

Oh, and they seem to be updating the wiki for CCC servants with some artbook stuff.

No new images of Darke Alter yet(but there are already two of Astolfo(trap) in his new outfit...

Damn it, rused again. Drake Alter isn't obtainable, she's just an enemy that shows up in the story. The last servant of the chapter is Christopher Columbus despite this chapter being called a female focused one like Shinjuku was male focused (And only had new male servants). Fucking Higashide, he always ends up disappointing.

Got Scheherazade off my first ten roll though.

ZeroStormZZ wrote:Damn it, rused again. Drake Alter isn't obtainable, she's just an enemy that shows up in the story. The last servant of the chapter is Christopher Columbus despite this chapter being called a female focused one like Shinjuku was male focused (And only had new male servants). Fucking Higashide, he always ends up disappointing.

Got Scheherazade off my first ten roll though.

LUCKY.

Shame about Drake Alter, though...

So yeah, "Caster of the Silent Palace" is confirmed to be Scheherazade.  And apparently, she's...not that great in game.  Her attack stat is just barely higher than Siegfried's, and she's a 5 star caster, where the others hover around the low 10ks.  Her skill set also is weird, as her first is a single target NP drain that also gives her an Arts boost for a single turn, her second is a charm that only works on males but also increases her defense, and her third is a battle continuation effect with a defense up against those who have the "King" trait.  And her NP is kind of meh in regards to damage, even though she's supposed to be a more offensive-based Caster.

DON'T CARE, WANT THE THICC.

*rolls a 10 roll*

....I got the loli Agartha Assassin.  XD

Anyway, I'm a little ways into Agartha, and everything aside from the fight with the giant Berserker Boar has been fine (seriously, fuck that thing, they busted it out multiple times and it's always got over 300k hp, can charge it's NP gauge and get an attack up with a single move, and all of its attacks are AoE.  I FUCKING HATE THE GIANT BERSERKER BOARS, FUCK THEM).  Also, just to let everyone who's participating or who will in the future, the main story quests in Agartha gives double Bond points to all female Servants in your party.  Base amount is 1700, so your female Servants will be getting 3400 Bond points per completed battle at the start.  Use this to grab some extra quartz and close the distance on getting the Bond CEs for your female Servants!

Also got a little ways into Septem right now.  Aside from some RNG misfortune in extra missions for quartz, the early part is pretty easy.  I am expecting the difficulty to spike a bit more as we encounter Caligula again, as well as Altera and (if I remember correctly) a second encounter with Leff.  And if my memory serves me right, you should bring only Calvary class servants for the final boss fight of Septem.  It's strong against Knight classes (Archer, Saber, Lancer), so bring your Riders, Casters, Assassins, Berserkers, and Jeanne if you've got her.  I'll be pumping up Lu Bu some more to get him his first ascension along with Hans, and I'll be pumping up Kojirou and Marie and Kiyohime in general.  That should give me a solid team to work with for the majority of Septem (got Atalanta up to 20 already, but I should probably pump some into Romulus since he's my only good 3 star Lancer.  At least until I get CuBro.).  Should have two 10 rolls ready by the time I'm done with Septem, so I'll burn those to try and get Salter and Nero.  We'll see what happens then.

Oh yeah Sheherazade is garbage, she might legitimately be the worst 5 star in the game. I'm still leveling her to 90 but I have no idea what they were thinking.

ZeroStormZZ wrote:Oh yeah Sheherazade is garbage, she might legitimately be the worst 5 star in the game. I'm still leveling her to 90 but I have no idea what they were thinking.

It's a damn shame.  >.<

Looking over the skill set for "Nightless Castle Assassin", and I think I probably got the mechanically better servant. Defense debuff on one enemy that works just like Liz's, Imperial Privilege (self heal, essentially), and a party attack up buff that also gives a Quick up buff on everyone other than herself for 3 turns. She's a solid Assassin support with a single target Quick NP that seems to have debuffs involved (can't be sure, as the video I watched with her using her NP was against hands).

...think I'd better throw her in my party right now.

She can go right next to Mysterious Heroine Alter X on my team, because I guess I can only roll the bad 5 stars now.

ZeroStormZZ wrote:She can go right next to Mysterious Heroine Alter X on my team, because I guess I can only roll the bad 5 stars now.

lol

I just seem to have a hard time rolling the Limiteds I want.  Got lucky with getting Ishtar the first time she was offered, but with Nero Bride and Dantes, I had to wait until their second or third rate ups before I was fortunate enough to get them.  Chances are that Scheherazade is limited as well, which would suck, since even if she's not good I still want her for Waifu bait.

....hm. First Kiritsugu, now her. I seem to be attracting solid Assassins. Maybe I'll get lucky and finally get Jack if I do another 10 roll in this gacha...

Hmmm... If it's going to be December before we see London (and Lancer Alter), then maybe I'll give the summoning a shot after Rome. Nero should be added to the pool when I finish, right?

DoubleEdged wrote:Hmmm... If it's going to be December before we see London (and Lancer Alter), then maybe I'll give the summoning a shot after Rome. Nero should be added to the pool when I finish, right?

Yeeeeup.  She's a story-locked servant, so once you clear chapter 2, she'll be unlocked and available to be summoned in the story pool gacha.  And I'd definitely recommend at least trying to go for her.  Right now, she's an okay Saber with an AoE Arts NP that does respectable damage, and her two skills heal her, with one also giving her enhanced Debuff resistance.  Her third skill, which will come out at a later interlude (I believe it's her second one, the first interlude boosts the damage of her NP), will give her her third skill, which is a really strong Battle Continuation skill called Thrice-Setting Sun.  Battle continuation typically only has an auto-life effect that procs once, but Nero's can proc up to three times, and lasts five turns (typically Battle Continuation lasts three turns).  This skill makes her a 4 star Saber version of Cu Chulainn, essentially.

She'll also have a rate-up for the Nero Olympics event that should take place around August/September, and again with the Saber Wars event that drops after New Year's. So while you can go for her now just to get it out of the way, it's not an imperative, and there will be future opportunities to get her if you must have her.

Oh goddamn, this gives me a much better idea of image than that promo artwork. And this is not a summonable Servant?



Truly is a shame.
Well, you can probably hope for limited summon at some point (Jeanne [Alter] is like that, right?).

And back on Nero, she seems to have some really good stats for someone under level 30. Is that how she normally is, or is the NPC-summon somewhat stronger at a comparable-level basis?

From what I've heard, the assets used for Drake Alter work along the lines of a reskin for her base attacks. Haven't fought her yet so I don't know if her NP is any different, but if she's essentially a re-skin and she wasn't seen in the data leak from a while ago, then chances are she's just an NPC boss like Ereshkigal was (except in that case they didn't even have assets set up for Ereshkigal, so they had to use a giant banshee NPC for her in her boss fight). That doesn't mean a Drake Alter won't ever happen, but it's probably not going to happen anytime soon.

As for story supports, it can vary. But yes, they typically have access to skills that aren't available if they haven't reached a certain ascension, or they have slightly enhanced stats as comparable to their summonable counterparts, or later in the story they'll be higher in level than their non-grailed level cap allows (saw this for Ushiwakamaru and Ishtar in the Babylonia chapter; former was at 75 when the non-grailed cap for 3 stars is 70, and Ishtar was at 100 when the non-grailed cap for 5 stars is 90).

Then you've got the likes of King Hassan and Merlin, where the characters that you can summon are post-support NPC versions that had a final nerf before being released as usable characters. Japanese mobile gaming laws do not allow for any kind of nerfing of characters after they are available to the public (use as an NPC that the player can utilize doesn't count); only buffing, either through enhancing the effects on a character or adding additional effects, either temporary for events or permanent, are allowed. This was due to a legal dispute that stems from the fact that characters or items are considered digital goods, which are legally considered real world goods and items that have an inherent value. Any sort of action that would nerf said goods and thereby devalue it is a kind of price fixing or ripping off of the consumer due to their goods now being intrinsically less than what it originally was, which is illegal. At least that's my take on it. I could be off on some aspects of that issue.

Shame about Drake Alter, though. She's damn sexy. :3

I think I have 2 parts to go before I'm finished with Septum. And now I've also started taking notice of something else- 3* Servants & CEs do not appear to be exclusive to quartz summoning. Which in the end means that a lot of what comes out of quartz summoning also has a chance to come out of Friend Point summoning, albeit somewhat rarely.

Yep, you can rarely get 3 star servants via FP. Since I'm saving all my quartz that's my only means of getting ones they don't give out beyond tickets. Got another Boudica via FP but I don't want to use her.

Septem cleared.

ROMULUS IS A CHEATING SONOFABITCH. Spamming his buffing abilities (which DO stack for them!), to the point that the 50+ Pendragon companion I brought along was doing poor damage. I had to do a 3-seal revival. At the very least, I shouldn't have anything else important that might need Command Seals for now.

The other two major bosses were actually made very simple due to the companions I brought. A 60 El Malloi for THAT guy, and a 50 Emiya for the last boss.

So now I decided to do another 10-pull. And I now think I'll have to choose a different servant from the "Free 4*" lineup that's coming at some point... because I just rolled Carmilla.
(It'll probably be Emiya. Heracles starts to lose his shine quickly when you see how fast Berserkers tend to go down. And I need a good Archer anyways, since I have two reputable 3* Berserkers as it is.)

I guess now I need to figure out how to pass the time. It's probably going to be mostly ADV Embers. Though should I focus on leveling up to the point of using Silver Embers, or sell Silver Embers and use the cubes to buy Fou cards? (I already got the summon tickets)

Hot damn that design is awesome, sexiest pirate captain ever!  It is a unforgivable shame that she's not a flushed out servant like Jeanne Alter(who is one of their most popular characters).  Having more playable corrupted characters would be the best and it's s shame their skipping on that(Ushiwakamaru, Adult Medusa Lancer, and now Drake).

https://www.reddit.com/r/grandorder/comments/6kqfon/gilgamesh_coming_soon_to_na_fgo/

That answers that question.  

Still leveling up loli Agartha Assassin at this point before I continue in Agartha, so progress on that (that being my JPN account) is on hold.  I did do all but the level 30 Free Quest and all the story quests in Septem, so that's cleared.

And now for 10 rolls.  Going to do two, since I'm two quartz shy of being able to do three.

....got some good stuff.  Really good stuff.  Like an NP3 CuBro, NP2 Ushiwakamaru, and I also got Caesar.  Plus, Kaleidoscope (5 star CE that boosts an equipped servant's NP gauge to 80%), and Jeanne D'arc.  

Just need Waver now and I'll have a great Arts-meta team to carry me through the game.  As it stands right now, I could easily just pair those two off with Hans to have a kind of Crit Arts meta comp going.

NA version is also giving out 20 quartz to all accounts from the F/GO panel at Anime Expo. To get it, you just need to have an existing account by tomorrow.

Heh, I might be able to make something much more usable out of Carmilla. I have Sorcery Ore at max rank (so +20% to NP gain rather than 15%) on her, and as long as an Arts card is led, even her Quick cards give me so much NP gauge. It's too bad Assassin item day was yesterday; I guess I have something to look forward to next Friday night. I should definitely have her at level 50 by then.

Minor JPN version Update: Some mid to late July game updates will have a filter for exp cards fitting the class of the servant they're being fed to, and the class advantage/disadvantage triangle map for Extra classes will be added.  That's it.  Still nothing about the log-in bug that's been plaguing some players in Japan and abroad.  It's been four days now, so either the problem is bigger than thought or DW isn't prioritizing it like they should.

I haven't been affected by the bug myself, thankfully, but I can imagine how frustrating it would be not being able to do Agartha or get log-in bonuses and have those log-in chains break.

For the NA version, a quest that is being released alongside the announcement for the October 24th Blu-Ray release of F/GO: First Order in NA was announced on the official Facebook page.  Event period will take place from July 6th at 4am UTC to July 13th at 3:59 UTC.  I've heard that the servers for the NA version were on the west coast, so I find it odd that the NA version doesn't follow Pacific Standard Time.  *shrugs*  Anyway, you can obtain a "commemorative Craft Essence featuring the key art of 'Fate/Grand Order: First Order'" through this quest.  It boosts your Mystic Code (the outfit you're wearing) experience gain by 50 point, which is nothing special, but helpful.

That's it for now, outside of the Anime Expo announcement that Gilgamesh would be released soon in the NA version as a limited. Going to continue grinding the 20 AP exp daily to level up my party to 30 before doing the 30 AP daily (and continue grinding that to increase my leveling so I can get first ascensions for Jeanne and Vlad).  Now that I've got my loli Agartha assassin at 80, I'll be jumping back into Agartha in the JPN version.  ...as soon as I clear the Master Missions for this week.  

DrgnmastrAlex wrote:Anyway, you can obtain a "commemorative Craft Essence featuring the key art of 'Fate/Grand Order: First Order'" through this quest.  It boosts your Mystic Code (the outfit you're wearing) experience gain by 50 point, which is nothing special, but helpful.

Well, I guess it might help when we actually start getting more Mystic Codes (which doesn't happen until Londonium update, right?). After all, that tight battlesuit MC will be starting right back at level 1.

Loving Carmilla's stats at 49, but I guess that's because this is the point where she has her highest growth. I'm guessing it's going to slow down a lot as I get her to higher levels?

Probably. Servant stats either have an S curve or a reverse S curve. For example, Kojiro has a reverse S curve so he raises early and then stagnates for a while, which is part of why he is so good for Orleans.

S curve and reverse S curve is real.  Another good example of this is Lu Bu and Vlad.  Lu Bu's stats seem to jump pretty high early on, but as you get into the 30s it slows down.  Still, he actually passes Vlad early on, which was why I was using Lu Bu over Vlad.  Vlad will start getting better stats around 35-40, which is why I'm going to ascend him over Lu Bu.

That being said, it also means that servants like Lu Bu and Kojirou get another big boost in stats with their third and fourth ascensions.  The cirnopedia page has a breakdown of growth for each servant, and I believe that the reddit board has compiled which servants have their growth on an S or reverse S curve.

As many anticipated, there is going to be an Agartha Part 2 rate up gacha. And as some had surmised, due to certain characters making an appearance, it'll feature Hercules and D'eon. And Drake as well, just not Drake Alter.

Agartha Part 2 gacha goes from July 5th at 6pm JST to July 19th at 12:59pm JST.

That's pretty much it for now.