Fate/Grand Order IV - Are you my Master? [Rerun - Lite]

[Kitten Champion]

I used Nightwyrm's Dantes, Waver, Mozart -- Skadi, Mash (Classic), Artoria on the one I actually won. This was the first time I used Dantes because he's never been among my Friend's Servants.

I've taken to the strategy of bringing Mozart at the beginning with the CE that gives three turns of extra Buster damage, getting 50 crit stars and buffing Arts, then switching to someone else for this challenge. This time it was swapping to Skadi, so she could super-charge Dantes and he could NP.

I would say Dantes made something of a difference, mostly because of crit stars. Still, it was pretty much the same song-and-dance from my many, many attempts before. I just happened not to die this time.

Honestly, the most infuriating thing about this challenge is that it feels like it wants you to experience that feeling of cleverness when you manage to figure out how to negate the damage from their NPs by shifting the Field effect off of them, but that kind of rings hollow when any given normal attack can still easily hit with the same force as any of those NPs. It's like its mocking you for trying to use the mechanics it itself established.

[Resileaf]

I think what really makes the jaguar challenge quest absolute hell is that any of the bosses critting will delete a character. No way to prevent it unless you're immune every turn. Doesn't matter how strong your DPS is if it can die instantly, lose their guts and be reduced to 1 HP. And when you only have 1 HP, no way to survive Nobu's terrain change.

[TherianTheorist]

Still struggling after on and off attempts all day. I feel like they throw around instant death

Been using Merlin, Mash, and Karna. Usually lose one of them on the first two turns, though. Back row has been support Altria as backup DPS, Proto Cu to save cost, and a rotating four star as I try and find someone who can survive the Jagaurs. Some attempts I can't even get stalling tactics started.

[Red Fel]

Yeah, I was able to handle Touta reasonably well once I figured out that the best strategy was to 1v1 him. I got close on Izo with Melt and the Casters (have you heard about my new band, Melt and the Casters?) but couldn't finish the job. Leonidas has been right out. And I'm not even getting close to Taiga.

Like, I've dealt with CQs that are challenging before - I get it, that's kind of the point. I push through, I rethink, I read some tips, I try again and I get there eventually. These feel brutal even by CQ standards. Like, every strat I've been able to find for Leonidas involved a 5-star Saber and Merlin. I don't have either of those things. If the winning strat isn't so much "form a team that does this" as it is "own these 5-star Servants," it's not a good CQ in my mind.

Yes, I realize the irony of that statement when I beat Touta with Eresh and Lartoria. Doesn't matter. I shouldn't have to have Eresh and Lartoria to beat a CQ, and I feel like I kinda did.

Still glad I have 'em, though.

[DaedalusMkV]

Well, it's been a while since I popped in here.

On that topic... I haven't even attempted the challenge quests for this. "Extremely difficult, intended for advanced Masters only" doesn't seem like the kind of thing a guy who isn't even allowed to attempt most Challenge Quests should be wasting precious time on, especially when time is always my limiting factor in this game (I have over 200 golden apples saved up right now. I don't think AP would be a problem for a very long time). I don't have the depth of high-level Servants, the access to support Casters or the top-level CEs that they're likely balancing this around. Hell, I only barely eked by in the later story quests in that last summer event.

On the other hand, the immense amount of materials in the last two events has been huge for me, and while the Gacha has been very unkind with 5*s (my last non-guaranteed SSR was Achilles, over 200 rolls ago), I've been swimming in great 4*s, more than making up for my deficiencies in most areas. My only real hole now is Casters, with only Sieg and Medea holding down the fort there (and, technically, Irisviel at level 50 because of quests in the last event, but most of what I've read about her is some variation on 'just don't, she doesn't work'). I've now got a golden Servant in every Class save Foreigner and Moon Cancer, and two or more in most Classes, and that's pretty nice.

With my primary characters in each Class near or at max level, I'm working on second entries to improve my depth now. I definitely feel like my team is getting better, but I know I have a long way to go yet since I really only have two functional characters in Saber, Lancer and Rider right now. But we're definitely improving.

I did finish London in the main story, and got a good start on America, in what little time we've had between events. The story has definitely gone uphill a lot since Rome, but I kind of felt a lot of the revelations at the end of London just... Didn't have a huge amount of impact. Maybe it's because I'm playing things late and some of the events have been kind of spoilery for people with decent deductive skills, maybe it was just flat because we didn't really have any particular investment in the meta-plot up to this point. I don't know. The 'WTF' highlight of it was definitely Kintoki and Tamamo showing up right near the end, barely doing anything and then leaving again immediately when the protagonist showed up. Eh, whatever. I got a lot of Mordred, and every time Mordred.exe stopped working because someone treated her with trust and respect was great. It's basically a whole story arc of 'what if Mordred got to be the hero she always wanted to be', and I definitely can't complain about that.


One last thing... I know there's at least one other person around here who has Holmes, and I'd like some advice on... Well, how to use him. I picked him up as my GSSR, and I've been having trouble figuring out what sort of role he should be serving in a team. Ruler durability is great, but his damage output is sub-par (unless there's a Moon Cancer around to beat on), and his skills don't immediately suggest any particular playstyle to me (unlike, say, Jeanne, who is clearly for stall compositions or supporting a glass cannon attacker). What is the secret to unlocking Holmes' potential? Because I'm certain he's excellent, but I just can't seem to make him work out in practice.

[Kitten Champion]

One last thing... I know there's at least one other person around here who has Holmes, and I'd like some advice on... Well, how to use him. I picked him up as my GSSR, and I've been having trouble figuring out what sort of role he should be serving in a team. Ruler durability is great, but his damage output is sub-par (unless there's a Moon Cancer around to beat on), and his skills don't immediately suggest any particular playstyle to me (unlike, say, Jeanne, who is clearly for stall compositions or supporting a glass cannon attacker). What is the secret to unlocking Holmes' potential? Because I'm certain he's excellent, but I just can't seem to make him work out in practice.

So, here's the thing about Sherlock Holmes, he's meant primarily for Challenge Quests and similar difficult content.

The point of Holmes primarily is supporting offensive crit-teams - specifically Arts and Quick teams - by continually debuffing strong enemies with his NP to significantly reduce their defense and remove pesky invincibility. He has fantastic NP gain and his skills can keep himself alive pretty well, so maintaining his enemy debuff + party buff from his NP isn't hard.

What he doesn't do is provide much damage himself nor generate stars consistently, so the rest of your team and CEs have to do that.

Ideally, get a Saber Lancelot - he's Arts-focused and generates stars both in burst and consistently each turn - from the next SR Ticket as he's got one of the best synergies with Holmes and is flat out one of the best ST Sabers. Emiya (Archer) is good as well with his Arts-heavy deck, good star generation, and the best crit-related skill in the game. There's also Chloe von Einzbern (who were getting as a welfare in a rerun early next year) which is Emiya but single-target and with an Arts NP, and Nursey Rhyme who is an Arts crit-focused Caster that could do a stellar amount of damage with Holmes. You could look at 1-3 Stars by levelling Cursed Arm Hassan as a cheap-and-effective star generator and Fuuma Kotaro who can further reduce enemy defenses while providing a pretty strong star-gen buff.

Use CEs like Seaside Luxury, His Rightful Place, Holy Maiden Leading Chaldea (for three that came free with recent events), and... assuming you don't have it 'cause I sure don't, look for Fragments of 2030 equipped on your Friend List Servants. Anything to keep stars in your pocket.

If you find Stars are no longer an issue, focus Holmes on getting his NP off - that's why His Rightful Place is a great CE for him - through increasing his NP gen like Divine Banquet or Jeweled Sword Zelretch (which is great, especially when deployment cost is tight).

Basically, he can lead to some monumental damage with a team that's setup to capitalize on his NP - which he can easily keep up if he can Arts chain with his party - and is predominantly useful against difficult-to-fight enemies especially with hard defensive buffs.

He's not really a great newbie Servant though, especially to have for the part of the game you're in, to be honest. Both because the mechanics get trickier and the life bars get much bigger later into the story campaign to actually make full use of his kit, and because you need other Servants to really make him function as he's intended. If you aren't critting he's not that useful, especially when you could pick a Servant who has Class advantage or a Caster with immediate buffs for the team.

Unrelated Edit about Gilfes to not double-post: I - after maybe 7-8 attempts - beat the Sheba quest. It wasn't hard, I mean conceptually speaking, focus her down individually and stall the hell out of the NPs. but every attempt took nearly 20 minutes so it's really tedious and if I didn't succeed after 10 attempts I'd probably have quit trying for a while.

The method I wanted to use all along but couldn't was a straight Melt strategy, essentially. She's not weak to the Assassin pair unlike my Riders and she can kill Sheba if she can gets enough room to do so, and I can use her with my Skadi. I did eventually get a 200% damage Melt on my friends list, and then proceeded to immediately win on that attempt. It wasn't super-easily exactly, I even used a Seal just to make sure I'd get that final 100K HP off of her, but it sure in hell wasn't the Jaguars either.

I used Jeanne-Melt-Skadi front-line and Mash-Cu-Ishtar (Rider) at the back.

The Cu was just there for tanking at cost reduction, to be honest. I was using Ushiwakamaru there before but decided at some point that Cu's ability to not die was more useful.

[NeoPhoenix0]

on the topic of challenge quests, at least match 5 is very challenging but at least fits the bill when it comes to having two different strategies to follow without really requiring specific servants, though there is still a bit of RNG with what buffs you get and when, and as the fight goes on the RNG ramps up, but you can also tear down the bosses defenses faster so the increased health can go by much faster than the first health bar. really you have the choice of going with a strong ST rider like kintoki and supporting him with possibly destroying the adds though honestly using strong supports to keep him alive seems easier than destroying the adds, or the 5 star specific servant route of melt who just doesn't take as much damage from the adds and has an evade though the enemy has a chance of getting through evade.

edit: definitely infinitely easier than the taiga quest, honestly might be the easiest quest yet outside of the increased RNG elements.

[DaedalusMkV]

So, here's the thing about Sherlock Holmes, he's meant primarily for Challenge Quests and similar difficult content.

The point of Holmes primarily is supporting offensive crit-teams - specifically Arts and Quick teams - by continually debuffing strong enemies with his NP to significantly reduce their defense and remove pesky invincibility. He has fantastic NP gain and his skills can keep himself alive pretty well, so maintaining his enemy debuff + party buff from his NP isn't hard.

What he doesn't do is provide much damage himself nor generate stars consistently, so the rest of your team and CEs have to do that.

Ideally, get a Saber Lancelot - he's Arts-focused and generates stars both in burst and consistently each turn - from the next SR Ticket as he's got one of the best synergies with Holmes and is flat out one of the best ST Sabers. Emiya (Archer) is good as well with his Arts-heavy deck, good star generation, and the best crit-related skill in the game. There's also Chloe von Einzbern (who were getting as a welfare in a rerun early next year) which is Emiya but single-target and with an Arts NP, and Nursey Rhyme who is an Arts crit-focused Caster that could do a stellar amount of damage with Holmes. You could look at 1-3 Stars by levelling Cursed Arm Hassan as a cheap-and-effective star generator and Fuuma Kotaro who can further reduce enemy defenses while providing a pretty strong star-gen buff.

Use CEs like Seaside Luxury, His Rightful Place, Holy Maiden Leading Chaldea (for three that came free with recent events), and... assuming you don't have it 'cause I sure don't, look for Fragments of 2030 equipped on your Friend List Servants. Anything to keep stars in your pocket.

If you find Stars are no longer an issue, focus Holmes on getting his NP off - that's why His Rightful Place is a great CE for him - through increasing his NP gen like Divine Banquet or Jeweled Sword Zelretch (which is great, especially when deployment cost is tight).

Basically, he can lead to some monumental damage with a team that's setup to capitalize on his NP - which he can easily keep up if he can Arts chain with his party - and is predominantly useful against difficult-to-fight enemies especially with hard defensive buffs.

He's not really a great newbie Servant though, especially to have for the part of the game you're in, to be honest. Both because the mechanics get trickier and the life bars get much bigger later into the story campaign to actually make full use of his kit, and because you need other Servants to really make him function as he's intended. If you aren't critting he's not that useful, especially when you could pick a Servant who has Class advantage or a Caster with immediate buffs for the team.

Okay, so his value is largely in his NP then. That makes some sense. I was mostly looking at his skills and Ruler chassis and scratching my head, but on further inspection the combination of a hefty Defense Down and Critical Up on his NP does add up to a huge amount of damage output for crit-heavy teams. I hadn't really noticed his high NP gain, but that could easily have just been because I was favouring other attackers and holding his NP for an NP chain, both of which may have been a mistake.

Interestingly, while I might not have a perfect setup for using with Holmes, I do have a lot of the tools you're mentioning here. My two core Sabers are Altera (who is, of course, a jack-of-all-trades with a bit of everything, but has outrageous single-turn damage potential in a crit team thanks to Crest of the Star and Natural Body) and... Saberlot. Who I was pretty pleased to pull not long ago when I was rolling for MHXX and BB. So I have him, already at level 70 and with the mats to level his skills nicely. I also have Emiya as my secondary Archer... And Chiron as my primary, who slots extremely well into crit teams thanks to his team-wide crit buff and high star generation. I also have Achilles in Rider, who happens to be one of the most absurd star generators I've seen (his NP, all by itself, will frequently generate 35+ stars. I've seen his NPQQ chains generate 60-70). I've got Assassin Ushi as well, for another 'the NP generates a billion stars' character, and Shiki's no slouch either in the 'Arts-focused character who can generate stars well enough' category. Gorgon's on my roster as well, but... While her crits hit like a freight train, I can't think of a lot of circumstances I'd want a Ruler and Avenger in the same squad. Maybe against Alter Ego or Foreigner bosses?

For CEs, I do have two of the three event CEs (I actually have two MLB His Rightful Places, because they seemed to drop like candy for me in that event, but I had only just started when Holy Maiden was available, and I couldn't do that event), and Classic Three Great Heroes boosts star gain hard, but looking at it... Not much else to help with crits at high rarities out of the Gacha CEs. Imaginary Around is relevant in some cases (though my MLB Gandr is probably just better for the price), Star of Camelot generates stars but probably isn't super useful outside of niche builds (maybe with Gorgon?), Pirates Party is for very niche situations involving Invincible spam, Victor of the Moon... When did I even get that? That one seems potentially pretty nuts if I can generate the stars naturally. 20% Buster Effectiveness and 20% Crit Damage boost. Wow. Can't believe I never noticed that before. Altera could do some really disgusting stuff with that.


Thanks for the breakdown. Sounds like I have something to work towards now for an effective challenge quest team.

[Resileaf]

Well, I couldn't do the Jaguar challenge quest, it was too tough, but I've beaten Sheba by the skin of my teeth. It was extremely close, especially since the adds just spammed their skill to increase her NP gauge after a while left alive. Jeanne tanked her last NP and Ryouma got the killing blow though, and gone is the loan shark.

[Kitten Champion]

Well, I couldn't do the Jaguar challenge quest, it was too tough, but I've beaten Sheba by the skin of my teeth. It was extremely close, especially since the adds just spammed their skill to increase her NP gauge after a while left alive. Jeanne tanked her last NP and Ryouma got the killing blow though, and gone is the loan shark.

That's funny, that was my entire strategy until Melt showed up. I probably would've won the first time around with Ryouma, Jeanne, and Merlin had I not been an idiot and used Ryouma NP the same time I used Jeanne. For whatever reason, I couldn't replicate that point from the first battle and ended up wasting about a hour and a half.

Gorgon's on my roster as well, but... While her crits hit like a freight train, I can't think of a lot of circumstances I'd want a Ruler and Avenger in the same squad. Maybe against Alter Ego or Foreigner bosses?

Oh, don't worry about the Classes that much. Not every quest is going to cleanly give you a Class advantage to work with anyways and having Extra classes available can side-step the issue -- it's not like Jalter is useful because of the preponderance of Ruler enemies.

That being said, Berserkers are a good target. You also have the - very occasional but generally quite tough - Ruler enemy to which a Ruler/Avenger combo works absolutely fine with.

[TherianTheorist]

Adding Guest Nero eventually let me struggle past Jagaurs. Now on to losing early into Sheba's second health bar, though I got very close once early on. I've made a habit of using Mash and Merlin as my first option for high level content.

[Leon]

Ticket Farm is all full ahead, the rare drop happened while I was getting the last of the burgers needed to get the last shop card. Sheba continues to say no but a did get some more gold cubes on the way so it wasn't all bad and another two of the 4star CE (although im not in any need of hotdogs really and i doubt im going to get the other two sadly as its a nice card)

[Kitten Champion]

Beat Xalter after 6 attempts or so.

I thought my Abby would be invaluable here cause her skills are generally quite good for this, but with the max-broken damage CE equipped she simply takes way too long to get to her NP off and I quickly learnt that you really want to clear the first layer of grunts quick and get Xalter out of her first life bar first. So you need to use an AOE NP and keep your evade/invincible/stun-heavy Servants in the backline.

Would've used Hokusai - and did once from my Friend List - but being a Foreigner only really helps for the very beginning while having a support Merlin around for successive Invincibility spam and healing with Jeanne was more crucial then the damage dealer I was using.

I tried using Artoria (Saber) mostly because of the damage, but she's got no defensive abilities beyond the CE's guts which proved fatal.

Then, on my last and what turned out to be successful attempt, I used Ereshkigal.

Eresh has her defensive/NP gain buff that made Jeanne & Merlin better and more survivable along with herself, which combined with her NP steroid she gets going pretty quickly. She also has her single-turn Invincibility for the turtling aspect of the fight, and according to the wiki there's only one Saber among the mobs and it's rather weak so she's usually neutral or has advantage there.

So, it was Jeanne/Eresh/Merlin front lines and Mash/MHXX/Cu in the back lines.

I levelled up MHXX's first skill - which gives her an Invincibility with a 5-turn CD to 10 - before the mission 'cause I knew this was coming.

I learnt from previous attempts that giving Cu Grudge Match is a mistake, you want to give him Volumen Hydrargyrum or something similar for him to take off as many turns as possible. When I won he was the only one left standing, as per his idiom.

Also the plug suit is the best for this, the stun takes away two turns and with it I could keep Mash in the backlines in case I needed an emergency out for an NP.

I enjoyed this CQ, so long as you grasp that you're on a timer and can think ahead to what skills and CDs you have you can succeed. It's more fun than finding the biggest hammer you got and whacking a giant HP bar until it dies.

[Resileaf]

Phew, another challenge quest done. MHXA's sugar rush has subsided and I lived through it. I pretty much used the same team as you, Kitten, so thanks for your post.

Took several attempts to get the golden run going, had a team of Eresh, support Merlin and Jeanne in the front line, and Mash, Chloe and Cu in the back. Biggest hurdle was when a door and the spriggan appeared at the same time, I had to manage debuffs to keep MHXA stunned until I could burst down the two mobs, and luckily managed to do so with well timed NP gauge buffs. It also destroyed MHXA's first bar, and from then on, it was a survival game to wait out her sugar crash.

After Chloe was destroyed by a MHXA NP and Jeanne by a crit, Cu was, unsurprisingly, the last man standing (I'll echo Kitten's advice, absolutely use the Volumen Hydrargyrum CE, it gives him three attacks of invincibility, and that buys SO MUCH TIME), and he was able to wait out until she had 1 HP left, and since I got a full NP bar at that moment, I killed her with Gae Bolg for style.

[Saambell]

So as someone who has none of the following: Eresh, Jeanne, Merlin, Tamamo, Abi, or Hokusai, how the heck am I supposed to do this? 90% of teams I see involve at least 2 of them, if not more then half of them.

Currently, I'm test building a team with Cu Alter(MLB Grudge Match), Mash(Volumen), Georgios(Volumen), Herc(Bond), and Cu(MLB Volumen). Toss in either a Merlin for support, or an Eresh with MLB Grudge Match and I might have a team. I have zero clue if this would ever work, but it might be my only shot, as I just don't have the staples that almost all other teams for this fight have.

[Resileaf]

The team you use heavily depends on what tactic you intend to follow. If you decide to burst down MHXA's first bar as quickly as possible and focus on surviving the second phase, you'll need a team that can survive for a very long time as you let her debuff run out. If you want to destroy her snacks over time and manage the buff and debuff game they give, you'll have to build a team more balanced to destroy the right snacks as they come up.

I think your team could work out well to beat her first bar quickly and survive the rest. Support Merlin or some other kind of hard survival servant should serve your needs. Just make sure you kill the spriggan yourself and don't let her eat it, the buff it gives her is too powerful, even if the debuff it gives you is crippling.

[Saambell]

Have tried several times, closest I got was getting her to 200k health the turn my last character(Cu OG of course) died. Otherwise I haven't even gotten her starving in most runs. Was using a support level 100 Abi with MLB GM, but doesn't seem to have worked. Guess its Merlin time.

Edit: I don't like how 90% of the Merlin's in my friends list have gone extinct for the rise of Skadi. For these kinds of Quests she's worse then useless. And I KNOW in 2 years every one of those Skadi is going to vanish as we welcome our new Castoria overlords.

Edit2: In my first Merlin run, he died in the first 3 turns, and I'm on turn 11 and still haven't broken her first bar. This is going swimmingly. But I'm going to see how far I can go each run.

[Resileaf]

Sounds like you're having lots of trouble getting Cu to use his NP then? That would be the best to ensure a quick break of the first bar, so if it doesn't happen, it's pretty much certain that you wouldn't be able to get through the fight at all.

If you have plenty of command seals, might be worth trying to restart the fight until you can fill your NP bar with a command seal and buster chain with Cu. I don't know how much damage it can do, but maybe it would be enough to break the bar? Or at least deal enough damage for the defense buff from the golem to not matter as much.

[Kitten Champion]

Edit: I don't like how 90% of the Merlin's in my friends list have gone extinct for the rise of Skadi. For these kinds of Quests she's worse then useless. And I KNOW in 2 years every one of those Skadi is going to vanish as we welcome our new Castoria overlords.

Yeah~

The lack of Merlins has really been obnoxious for these CQ. Any attempt to do a Merlin-based strat adds an additional 5-or-so minutes of reloading the Friend List over and over just to find one of the two persons who regularly still have him up and neither may have a particularly beneficial CE for this kind of thing. I miss the old days when Merlins with Fragments of 2030 were so common you could pick your teeth with them.

Not that Skadi isn't useful in the CQ. I definitely beat Sheba with Skadi-Melt, probably would've done the same with Izo had I thought of it, and you can use every S-tier Support under the sun for the Jaguars -- but her weaknesses become pretty blatant here.

[Saambell]

This last run had absolutely the best possible first turn I could ever hope for with Buster Chain for Cu Alter. With it, and Merlin's buffs it did 300k damage. Not nearly enough. He then spent the next two turns being pathetic, and didn't get his buster cards again for another few turns. Merlin died turn 6, and Cu Alter's NP Buster Chain does a mere 400-500k meaning the Spriggan is primed for Eating, as it seems she will more often pick the one you put the most damage into. Meaning Cu totally fails to kill the Spriggan, then MHXA instantly eats it for bad times. Like, even if I did the NP Boost turn 1 to break the bar, I still would never be able to kill the Spriggan even if I got my NP back by then. Cu Alter just plain lacks the damage. And I don't have ANYONE else who is nearly as damaging or more importantly as survivable who can replace him.

Edit: I just plain don't have the damage to kill that stupid Spriggan. Merlin dies so fast he can't boost Cu Alter for the spriggan, its so far into the line up. I broke her bar turn one, and on turn 12 she still has 7 turns of the timer. Does her eating skip that turn? If so I see absolutely no way I can do this. I might as well just bring a sacrificial turn one nuke, then load the entire rest of the part with stall, not even caring if she eats that stupid spriggan, as LITERALLY NOTHING CAN ONE TURN IT. Maybe if I brought Ozy instead of Cu Alter as my nuke, just maybe he would live to the Spriggan to Nuke it, but that's a long shot. I just can't. I just don't have the characters for this.

[Kitten Champion]

This last run had absolutely the best possible first turn I could ever hope for with Buster Chain for Cu Alter. With it, and Merlin's buffs it did 300k damage. Not nearly enough. He then spent the next two turns being pathetic, and didn't get his buster cards again for another few turns.

It happens to men from time to time. Or so I've heard.

and Cu Alter's NP Buster Chain does a mere 400-500k meaning the Spriggan is primed for Eating, as it seems she will more often pick the one you put the most damage into. Meaning Cu totally fails to kill the Spriggan, then MHXA instantly eats it for bad times. Like, even if I did the NP Boost turn 1 to break the bar, I still would never be able to kill the Spriggan even if I got my NP back by then. Cu Alter just plain lacks the damage. And I don't have ANYONE else who is nearly as damaging or more importantly as survivable who can replace him.

I never killed the Spriggan. I didn't even try after the first time where I NP'd him with MLB Grudge Match Abby with all her skills on and a damage buff from killing a previous mob... and only did, like, half his life-bar. I think you'd need crits for a chance at that, but it isn't worth the resources to set that up and if there's a risk it has any life left what would be the point?

[NeoPhoenix0]

I never killed the Spriggan. I didn't even try after the first time where I NP'd him with MLB Grudge Match Abby with all her skills on and a damage buff from killing a previous mob... and only did, like, half his life-bar. I think you'd need crits for a chance at that, but it isn't worth the resources to set that up and if there's a risk it has any life left what would be the point?

killing the spriggan isn't super difficult depending on the supports you have and the buffs you've stolen from her. but honestly, stealing it is a ton of effort for a minor amount of consistancy.

this one was both kinda easy (for me since stall teams have been my forte since the first year) and took me way to long. for some reason when i put jeanne in for her invulns i took out tamamo... once i put tamamo back in it took me two tries with a team of caster nero, support merlin, ruler jeanne, tamamo, mash, 4 star saber nero. the caster nero can be replaced with pretty much any strong AOE servant with an NP battery and some form of survival button. with the sheer omega level of stall i have access to i can't believe i never went with the tamamo jeanne combo... the ultimate wall. if i include all the failed strats i end up with like probably well over 30 tries at this one... still ended on solo nero saber in a risky bid to stall with guts since she had the buff removal. just lucky it never took my guts.

[Kitten Champion]

Completed the last CQ. I would say it's in line with typical CQs - like the one from the Apocrypha event and slightly easier than the bridge of death from the Ishtar Cup - rather than like most of the other Gilfes ones, especially if you have max-bond Hercules or Cu Alter. I assume that they weighed the difficulty for this differently because the Lore is there and they don't want to hide it behind a too aggressively difficult challenge.

Anyways, I used Jeanne/Jalter/Waver - Mash/Georgios/Cu Alter.

Jeanne proved invaluable, this the kind of quest where she shines and the invincibility/debuff cleanse/stun were all clutch here especially with Billy's burns. Everyone else pretty much did their job as expected.

I had some bad RNG in a couple of ways, I kept screwing up my initial plan to stun Nero and kill Bunyan - so I could prepare taunts and whatnot - by overestimating the damage I'd do on my Jalter cards often coming to the edge of taking her down but not quite as I had some weak Jatler card luck. So that took a couple attempts just to set that up, though each failed attempt was under a minute long so it made it easy to swallow. My Saint George also died with the [Necromancy] CE which I know has just a chance to trigger but... it usually does, so he basically took an NP and that was that.

[NeoPhoenix0]

this was definitely the easiest CQ in this event.

Spoiler: team

Show

support jeanne alter with mlb damage CE
waver with necromancy (cause i though this CQ didn't have enough rng, it never proced)
Jeanne classic with kscope (she died before i used her NP)
tamamo caster with prisma (did some healing but honestely didn't do much other than tank some hits)
mash (tanked a decent number of hits like a boss)
4 star nero saber with MLB damage CE (the ultimate anchor gets the victory with 0 effort)

the only annoying part of this is that if your damage dealers get killed by bride then they will burn to death after your turn without healing or cleansing so they can't even soak up more agro. but it really didn't matter, the only things that really matter here are to kill bunyan as fast as possible, kill jekyl before he NPs, i killed billy third though that lack of defense was annoying, save bride for the absolute last kill, if you can, kill bride and gil at the same time but it really isn't that much extra effort to just kill bride after she's been healed. the only reason this took two tries for me was i killed bride too early on accident the first time.

[Yael]

Well, I couldn't really go hard for this event, school got me hard with on-line class (which seems weird but ok), and I was only able to finish up 30 boxes in total. I'll redeem myself during X-Mass' roulettes!

Also, I wasn't able to do Fuji-nee, Ecchan and Georgious P's challenges quests, maybe if I had strategized more, but again, school's on my neck.

On a related note, Halloween starts today (tomorrow at 1am PST) so I'll be able to read the story I missed due to my FGO break last year~

Also, picking up the other MK Eli will be great~

[Leon]

Helena spooked me hard, made one last try for Sheba and had just picked up another 5 gold cubes when the next card along was a gold caster and im like YES!... oh hello Helena :(

[Resileaf]

AAAAAH!!! I'VE DONE IT! JAGUAR CHALLENGE DONE!

It took all three of my command seals, all spent on NP bars, but as there was Jaguar and Jeanne left to kill, with Jeanne at 10K HP and Jaguar at 90K, I figured that what I had to do was hit Jeanne with an arts chain to avoid killing her, making Jaguar killable with a NP and finally claim victory.

To do it this time, I had Eresh, support Merlin and Jeanne in the front and Mash, saber Shiki and Jaguar (who I didn't have to use in the end). Turns out that the most effective way to avoid deleting by random crit is to be invincible as often as possible, and Eresh being able to make herself invincible is invaluable.

[Kitten Champion]

I did 90 or so lottery boxes. I decided to stop after reaching the capacity limit of the Present Box, after burning every silver XP and having levelled quite a few of my 1-3 star Servants to 40 just to get the XP card numbers down. I should probably buy more inventory capacity from the shop, but I need those prisms elsewhere and unlimited lottery events aren't so common enough to where I'll be constantly facing this overcapacity issue.

Levelling Mecha Eli Mk.II and Shuten Caster will bring the XP card numbers down somewhat, and at no additional expense to mats.

The rerun should be a lot quicker to go through considering I - and presumably most of my Friend list - got all the CEs to increase the enemy appearance rates as to fill out the numbers in those "kill [X] of [Enemy Type]" missions.

AAAAAH!!! I'VE DONE IT! JAGUAR CHALLENGE DONE!

It took all three of my command seals, all spent on NP bars, but as there was Jaguar and Jeanne left to kill, with Jeanne at 10K HP and Jaguar at 90K, I figured that what I had to do was hit Jeanne with an arts chain to avoid killing her, making Jaguar killable with a NP and finally claim victory.

To do it this time, I had Eresh, support Merlin and Jeanne in the front and Mash, saber Shiki and Jaguar (who I didn't have to use in the end). Turns out that the most effective way to avoid deleting by random crit is to be invincible as often as possible, and Eresh being able to make herself invincible is invaluable.

Congrats. I should've used my seals more liberally there, I only consider using them when I'm on the brink of death and need to pull through with an extra life bar or final NP.

[chainer1216]

This was the hardest I've ever gone on an event and got 81 boxes!

And I'm ready to never hear Zerkalot yell "AAAAAATHAAAAAA!!!!!" again.

[NeoPhoenix0]

welp, i don't have the free time some of you have but i did manage 40 boxes, and i got two of skadi's skillls maxed, but as the grind went on i swear the arora steel got rarer and rarer, by the end i got like 1 per 7 quests, and it is supposedly around 36% drop per quest. somehow i feel a bit jipped but if i math it out i got around the number i was supposed to, guess it just gave me a ton near the begining of the grind.