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

[Yael]

What do you think will FGO's direction be? Gameplay wise I mean.

We have Command Codes, Craft Essences, Noble Phantasm Level, Attack and HP Fou (which reach up to +2000 points in stats), and there's a specific-card damage up value which comes next year iirc. Next to Strengthening (Rank Up) quests and Interludes which boost several things as NP's damage, adding NP or Skill effects, and in some cases, even increasing stats (as it happens with Iskandar's interlude). Emiyan has a second Rank Up to his Projection Skill, becoming Trace On and becoming a top tier servant (which he already was).

Would it be wise to implement, maybe as a Strengthening or as a part of a challenge quest of some sort, NP swaps? It is difficult, yes, but FGO's no indie game, and they do have resources to deviate into some other places in development, and doing so could help some servants to become useful in other ways instead of the usual haha noble phantasm go brrr. Maybe a wedding system of some sort? Most gacha games contain a wedding mechanic which further improves or enhances their statistics. Could we get actual useful Bond CEs? Such as Angra's with a Rank Up. Could we get best Kouhai's NP 5? DW? Please?

How about we get a special material to further increase NP Level without needing a second copy of a servant? Almost every gacha game has this sort of currency, which to be fair, copies of a servant are used to increase a different factor that other gacha games do for copies themselves, being tied to progression, whereas in FGO copies are tied to damage.

A couple of weeks ago, Delight Works stated that they pretend to have at least 10 years of FGO, which gives us another 5 years of JP and 7 of US, which is great, but the game hasn't changed too much since Command Codes, and that was years ago~

Thouhts?

[NeoPhoenix0]

we are apparently in maintenance hell... we need to get through a lostbelt before new years dangit.

normally i would be up for some extra apologems.

[Kitten Champion]

Hmm... started LB3, and three points jump out at me thus far.

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I like that they've started giving specified mat rewards at the end of missions along with Quartz. Sure, missions could often include guaranteed drops within them but this way you really know beforehand what your getting, and it makes getting to the end of that mission chain feel more rewarding.

It took me a bit to realize why my Mystic Code was inoperable at the start of battle, it reflects your PC's physical status in the narrative. I like that. It's a slight inconvenience, similar to what happens with Salem where your Servants are disempowered but feels less oppressive than having your Servants significantly de-levelled.

...and lastly, Orion proven to be pretty useful with all these Male Sabers and Berserkers in these Lost Belts. I was a bit unenthusiastic about having her as my only SSR Archer, but already her niche comes up enough to justify her expense.

[Velaryon]

I as well am starting Lostbelt 3 (first time I've ever been able to jump on a new singularity right when it was released, so that's cool). I hadn't done the intro missions/cutscenes yet, and so I'm not actually sure where those ended and the new Lostbelt missions began. Anyway, I had a few thoughts...

Spoiler: Lostbelt 3 intro & beginning

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It seems to me that Koyanskaya's attempted assassination of the main character was incredibly sloppy. Seriously, her plan was to: bake a cake, put exactly enough poison in it to kill him but only if he eats the entire thing, and then not even try to attack when found out and confronted? This honestly seems like a plan that was designed to fail.

The fact that Koyanskaya not only used a poison that could be traced back to China (and therefore make it the logical place to look for an antidote), but then also proceeds to go there herself, makes it seem rather obvious that she's leading the Chaldea team to that particular Lostbelt. While it could be just a way to draw them out so they can be dealt with, it also (when combined with the cutscene where the Crypters are discussing the situation) makes it look like she has her own agenda which does not necessarily align with that of the Crypters. Perhaps Akuta was right not to trust Koyanskaya or want her coming to her Lostbelt.

[Saambell]

I as well am starting Lostbelt 3 (first time I've ever been able to jump on a new singularity right when it was released, so that's cool). I hadn't done the intro missions/cutscenes yet, and so I'm not actually sure where those ended and the new Lostbelt missions began. Anyway, I had a few thoughts...

Spoiler: Lostbelt 3 intro & beginning

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It seems to me that Koyanskaya's attempted assassination of the main character was incredibly sloppy. Seriously, her plan was to: bake a cake, put exactly enough poison in it to kill him but only if he eats the entire thing, and then not even try to attack when found out and confronted? This honestly seems like a plan that was designed to fail.

The fact that Koyanskaya not only used a poison that could be traced back to China (and therefore make it the logical place to look for an antidote), but then also proceeds to go there herself, makes it seem rather obvious that she's leading the Chaldea team to that particular Lostbelt. While it could be just a way to draw them out so they can be dealt with, it also (when combined with the cutscene where the Crypters are discussing the situation) makes it look like she has her own agenda which does not necessarily align with that of the Crypters. Perhaps Akuta was right not to trust Koyanskaya or want her coming to her Lostbelt.

Spoiler: Koyan

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I read it as she did it as a hail mary see if it works, but did it in such a way that if it fails would send Chaldea into China. Thus baiting them to fighting Akuta, who Koyan had just had a fight with. It was win win, either she kills the Master, or she sends them to fight someone she just had a fight with.

Koyan absolutely has her own agenda. Just like Rasputin and the mysterious third of the trio of beings working beside the Crypters. They work directly for the Alien Tree, they dont care who wins, just that one of them does. They are fine with losing any of them, as long as one remains. So to her, if she gets Chaldea to kill a spare Crypter, one who Koyan doesnt like, who cares?

[Hunter Noventa]

A little over halfway through LB3 and...the game has really stopped pulling punches.

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First theres the fight against Xiang YU and Lan Ling at the same time. That's just...unfair, there's no good servant combo for that and they have way too much HP.

After using my seals on that...I get to Yu. Sure you have guts every round, but what use is that if the curse kills you and get reapplied every round, even if you buff your debuff resist? There isn't enough debuff removal and healing to keep up with that and do 600k damage. And seals wouldn'te ven help because she can use her NP every round and kill you anyway.

EDIT: Well I got it. Turns out you can either cheese it very slowly with a Command Code and a single servant...or get a perpetual NP engine going with the likes of Merlin and Medea Lily. Still feels like one of those fights you can't win without the right tool for a job, and the chances of acquiring said tool are up to RNG.

[Kitten Champion]

Thus far I've only lost once, and that was because I was being careless. It was in one of those trivial fights against the two standard giant mobs near the very beginning, which cost me 20-something AP and some level of shame.

Spoiler: As to the other fights

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I used Waver-Orion-Merlin + Abby against Xiang Yu and Lan Ling. Orion killed Lan very, very quickly. Like, 3-ish turns. I don't know whether they have low resist or I just got lucky but Waver's stun hit both of them twice, which helped a lot too. Then I moved on to Xiang Yu, who equally is a male, a Berserker, and is thus weak to Orion. So I got through his first 1 and a 1/2 life bars pretty easily.

Xiang Yu did manage to kill my Waver after a bit, but that only opened the door for my Abigail to pop out and start thwacking him with her teddy bear. Xiang Yu only got one NP off, and it only served to charge everyone's NP bar with Merlin being there.

As to the Consort Yu fight, I actually assumed that fight was intended to be easily winnable with the constant guts. I guess the poison damage mounts up and the guts no longer works if you don't kill her in enough turns?

I used Waver-Sanzang-Merlin, since that's my go-to anti-big deal Assassin line up generally. I was initially shocked when she just NP'd all of a sudden, thinking I'd have to restart and use Merlin's invincibility at the very beginning, but once I saw that the Guts was going to keep rolling in I did the fight as per usual and just smacked her with Sanzang's NP until she died.

I don't know what other fights are coming, aside from the Emperor which I'm not worried about as Jalter exists.

Edit: Oh, the big security guard fight kicked my butt. That was like a challenge quest. Evades stacked on top of Guts across an endless tide of enemies is painful. Especially when they get their super-attack so quickly. I might've made it had I equipped anyone with a Sure Hit CE, maybe, but by the time I lost I only had 4 more enemies to go so I felt compelled to use my seals.

I'd need an aoe Alter Ego like Passionlip to do well here.

[Hunter Noventa]

Thus far I've only lost once, and that was because I was being careless. It was in one of those trivial fights against the two standard giant mobs near the very beginning, which cost me 20-something AP and some level of shame.

Spoiler: As to the other fights

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I used Waver-Orion-Merlin + Abby against Xiang Yu and Lan Ling. Orion killed Lan very, very quickly. Like, 3-ish turns. I don't know whether they have low resist or I just got lucky but Waver's stun hit both of them twice, which helped a lot too. Then I moved on to Xiang Yu, who equally is a male, a Berserker, and is thus weak to Orion. So I got through his first 1 and a 1/2 life bars pretty easily.

Xiang Yu did manage to kill my Waver after a bit, but that only opened the door for my Abigail to pop out and start thwacking him with her teddy bear. Xiang Yu only got one NP off, and it only served to charge everyone's NP bar with Merlin being there.

As to the Consort Yu fight, I actually assumed that fight was intended to be easily winnable with the constant guts. I guess the poison damage mounts up and the guts no longer works if you don't kill her in enough turns?

I used Waver-Sanzang-Merlin, since that's my go-to anti-big deal Assassin line up generally. I was initially shocked when she just NP'd all of a sudden, thinking I'd have to restart and use Merlin's invincibility at the very beginning, but once I saw that the Guts was going to keep rolling in I did the fight as per usual and just smacked her with Sanzang's NP until she died.

I don't know what other fights are coming, aside from the Emperor which I'm not worried about as Jalter exists.

Edit: Oh, the big security guard fight kicked my butt. That was like a challenge quest. Evades stacked on top of Guts across an endless tide of enemies is painful. Especially when they get their super-attack so quickly. I might've made it had I equipped anyone with a Sure Hit CE, maybe, but by the time I lost I only had 4 more enemies to go so I felt compelled to use my seals.

I'd need an aoe Alter Ego like Passionlip to do well here.

I'm stuck on that big guard fight right now. I'd need an AoE Alter Ego of my own, since no one puts a Sure Hit CE on their supports. Mecha-Elly and Melt are great, but they just can't keep up.

[NeoPhoenix0]

I've been making decent progress, though I finally got punished for being too greedy in the first full servant fight that I had to depleat the full health bars of both the berserker and saber.

On the gacha front, after going absolutely ham to get musashi, I managed to scrounge up enough sq for a single 10 pull from mhx and shiki saber as I have neither and shiki doesn't come up often. So the game gave me shiki... This makes the desire sensor feel real as this was just a whim and I spent 300+ sq on musashi who I really wanted...

[Kitten Champion]

Well, I'm done.

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The fight with the Old Man took me two tries. While I am technically cognizant that Li Shuwen has an unstoppable Noble Phantasm and that is Li Shuwen I was fighting, it still somehow didn't occur to me until I saw my Sanzang turning into golden sparks. Second time around I committed far more energy into bursting him down as quick as possible, when he was on his last life bar and about to NP my Mystic Code came off the poison death-timer and I could switched Sanzang for Mash who seriously took one for the team, then kept going.

I'm 0-3 in guessing the Class of the Tree. Still, this time I went with MHXX as I was kind of eager to see how her [Threat to Humanity] damage modifier would go up against an actual Threat to Humanity, but it wasn't that noticeable what with the Arts resist.

Then I just replayed the quest with Sanzang and she killed it in, like, 7-8 turns or so. Having a Buster single-target Caster is really, really helpful in this game.

Oh, for the record, the Ultimate Life Form remains a very angry French Woman no matter what Lelouch says.

[Red Fel]

Thoughts on LB3 incoming. Spoilers, obviously.

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Okay, so elephant in the room: It's LB2 redux. Humans kept as peaceful happy cattle? Check. Overseen by a "benevolent" divinity? Check. Female Crypter dealing with personal anguish made raw by the events? Check. Two real distinctions for me. First, there was no Gerda. The Boy didn't have nearly as much characterization - or even a name. So between the plot being recycled and not having to look Gerda in the eyes as I unmake her reality, easier to handle. Second, instead of having a Divine who didn't understand why it was wrong for humans to live like cattle, we had a Divine who was basically a more benevolent Kiara - convinced that they were the sole true Human in the world.

So, yeah, the thrust of the chapter was different. LB2 was about "survival at what cost," while LB3 was about the theme of "humanity means responsibility." Okay. That's neat, I suppose.

Characterwise, I liked a lot. They did a good job capturing the blue and orange morality of Qin Shi Huang. I liked the consternation of Qin Liangyu. Han Xin was just kind of a weird geek to me, but I loved Old Man Li. On the hero side, Spartacus was a joy, Mordred was pretty consistently Mordred, and it was great to see Jing Ke finally receive some justice. Holmes getting super stoked over drugs was funny, as was Goredolf - precious, precious Goredolf - dropping the Civilization references. And a few other references on top of that.

Okay. Now let's talk about the tragic Chinese romance at the heart of this tragic Chinese romance. I'm speaking, of course, of Lan Ling.

No, I'm not. He's nothing as a character. I'm speaking of Akuta and Xiang Yu.

This, if anything, is the element missing from LB2. Instead of Ophelia and her self-worth issues, along with basically suffering through no fault of her own, we get Akuta being cursed with immortality, forced to live in a world where she doesn't belong and without the one man she loves. Then she meets him - or a version of him - and he has no recollection of her, because he's not the same man, and he ends up leaving her to fight and die anyway. It's pretty tragic.

I mean, it's not Gerda tragic. But it's tragic.

All that said, storywise, I consider this LB... decent. Adequate. I got stoked when certain events happened, there was some hype, but I didn't feel the same level of heartbreak I think I've felt in the past two. Maybe I've gotten inured to it somewhat, you know, after committing cosmic genocide twice.

Gameplaywise, yeah, it was hard. This is an LB that rewards having Servants with party dodge/invincibility, like David, Tristan, or Merlin. Especially Merlin. Hell, the fights with Xiang Yu aren't even obviated by having Foreigners - and I have Foreigners. He still crits like a freaking truck. Also, this LB had a lot (read, at least three) of Assassin bosses, which really tests your offensive Caster supply. I've got good Casters - Waver and Casko among them - but my best offensive caster is probably still CasGil, and he is not up to this task. (I mean, I guess I have Shuten now, but still...)

I managed to plow through. Some brute forcing, some retries. I did have to use Command Seals/SQ a couple of times. But yeah, this was a bear.

The fights in between were not hard. The ones without bosses were easy street for me. The only annoyance was bringing Ortinax Mash. I still do not like Ortinax's functionality. But any fight not involving a boss was extremely straightforward. Even those tanks were easy. But the boss fights? Eesh.

Overall, I think this LB felt... quicker. Shorter. LB2 felt like a slog in comparison. This one was fairly brisk. Maybe it's the pace at which I played it, I dunno. It was good, moved along, but aside from painting Marisbury a shade darker, it didn't really feel like it moved the metaplot forward much. Vitch is still out there, Holmes seems to have figured out the Trees, but... we still don't know who that freaky pale lady is. We still have no revelations about the Foreign God. This part felt more like a bottle episode than anything substantial. Yes, one more Crypter down, but aside from that?

So... okay. It was okay. That's my take.

[Velaryon]

I had a rough go of that fight with the fight with the guards too. I was finally able to do it without Command Seals though, by using Mecha Eli-Chan with Origin Bullet, and my Merlin and a borrowed Jeanne each with a Fragment of 2030. I came close to losing Mecha-Eli a couple times, and had to pull Merlin out with the Chaldea Combat Uniform's power to save him from an NP, but I made it through without losing anybody.

[Kitten Champion]

Wait, why would you use Origin Bullet? It's all Riders and Assassins if I can recall correctly, and they're using Evade not Invincibility.

[Red Fel]

Wait, why would you use Origin Bullet? It's all Riders and Assassins if I can recall correctly, and they're using Evade not Invincibility.

Ignore Invincible bypasses both Invincibility and Evade. That's the real draw of Origin Bullet - the guaranteed hit. The boost against Casters is just icing.

That said, you can also get the effect from Decapitating Bunny (+Quick), Pirates Party (stars every turn), Sweet Crystal (starting NP gauge), Detective Edmond (+Arts), and Frozen War-Bear (+Buster), if you have them. Lot of options there.

[Kitten Champion]

Ignore Invincible bypasses both Invincibility and Evade. That's the real draw of Origin Bullet - the guaranteed hit. The boost against Casters is just icing.

That said, you can also get the effect from Decapitating Bunny (+Quick), Pirates Party (stars every turn), Sweet Crystal (starting NP gauge), Detective Edmond (+Arts), and Frozen War-Bear (+Buster), if you have them. Lot of options there.

It does? That certainly makes Sure Hit feel like a waste.

Also, toss that into the pile of poorly or entirely unexplained game mechanics along with everything else I have to look up on the wiki like attributes and field types.

[DaedalusMkV]

It does? That certainly makes Sure Hit feel like a waste.

Also, toss that into the pile of poorly or entirely unexplained game mechanics along with everything else I have to look up on the wiki like attributes and field types.

Eh. Attributes are who cares, and the game did explain them in London to the extent they need explaining. They help a little bit, but the game itself says 'don't worry too much about this', and it's right. 10% isn't nothing, but it's not much either. You could remove them from the game entirely and almost nobody would notice. As for field types, that's another 'meh'. Aside from a handful of Servants, most of whom are among the worst in the game thanks to their reliance on field types that rarely come up, there's really nothing going on there. Unless you have a Servant who cares about field tags, it's pretty much irrelevant.

As far as Ignore Invincibility goes... Well, it obviously doesn't come quite as cheap as Sure Hit. You can get Sure Hit out of common 4* CEs (oh, look, it's With One Strike) and a couple of limited 3*CEs, and everything that gives Sure Hit also hands out other buffs, even the silver CEs. By comparison, Ignore Invincible is strictly limited to 5* CEs, and generally comes at a fairly significant cost (17% lost Quick Effectiveness on Decapitating Bunny compared to Imaginary Around, 5 Crit Stars on Pirates Party compared to Fragment, and so on). CEs, with the possible exception of Origin Bullet (which looks like a very special snowflake to me, and I kind of wish I had it), seem to value it slightly higher than a 50% NP charge. Which is... A lot, compared to Sure Hit which is worth around about equal to a 10% card effectiveness boost or so.



In other news for me... I've been grinding dailies pretty hard the last few days. I want to get Euryale to Ascension 4 before proceeding with Camelot, and I've got Servants of every class in the works so why not. There's a Lancelot in my immediate future, and if the other Servant fights in this thing are any indication I'm going to want her toolset to deal with that. I thought I had a decent stockpile of Stakes. I thought wrong. 120 of those darn things doesn't go anywhere at all it seems. They aren't quite Evil Bones levels of 'god, I need like a million of these', but they're darn close... I burned all my SQ chasing Gil and Ishtar, and got spooked super hard by Atalante*. Probably overdue for another 5* at this point, but eh. I got quite lucky with the 4* pulls (See: Atalante, Nitocris, Assassin of Nightless and Penthesilea in the last 60ish rolls), so it's all fair.

*This was a weird one: Great excitement seeing the rainbow spin into a gold archer card while rolling for Ishtar, followed by deep disappointment that it wasn't Ishtar, followed by 'oh, wait, Atalante's awesome too'.


Lastly... I've been looking at the upcoming events based on the JP schedule, and wow. I was not expecting to see nothing I can do without being finished like the entire Lostbelt until a rerun in late January/ early February. That's more than 4 months between the last event I was allowed to participate in (the Halloween rerun) and the next. Oof. I may need to learn some materials grinding locations at some point here... We somehow went from a relentless parade of events to absolutely nothing for a third of a year.

[Velaryon]

Wait, why would you use Origin Bullet? It's all Riders and Assassins if I can recall correctly, and they're using Evade not Invincibility.

Others already talked about how Ignore Invincibility overlaps Sure Hit (which I think is dumb but worked in my favor this time). The caster bonus attack didn't apply, but I don't remember what if any other CE's I have that would let me bypass those evades, so I went with the one I know for sure I have.

[Red Fel]

As far as Ignore Invincibility goes... Well, it obviously doesn't come quite as cheap as Sure Hit. You can get Sure Hit out of common 4* CEs (oh, look, it's With One Strike) and a couple of limited 3*CEs, and everything that gives Sure Hit also hands out other buffs, even the silver CEs. By comparison, Ignore Invincible is strictly limited to 5* CEs, and generally comes at a fairly significant cost (17% lost Quick Effectiveness on Decapitating Bunny compared to Imaginary Around, 5 Crit Stars on Pirates Party compared to Fragment, and so on). CEs, with the possible exception of Origin Bullet (which looks like a very special snowflake to me, and I kind of wish I had it), seem to value it slightly higher than a 50% NP charge. Which is... A lot, compared to Sure Hit which is worth around about equal to a 10% card effectiveness boost or so.

To be fair, a starting NP charge is valuable once, and in short fights. Once you actually use that NP, your NP doesn't immediately pop back up to 50% - that bonus is gone, leaving you with half a CE's worth of benefits. Fine in a short fight or while farming, crappy in a drag-out boss fight or CQ. By contrast, a permanent Ignore Invincibility buff is mostly worthless in a short fight - which you might end before it even becomes an issue, or use a Servant's active skills to bypass - but potentially invaluable in a long, drawn-out fight or CQ. I remember one challenge against Shishou and Doggo, where if you beat one, the other would immediately start spamming Evade, and you really had to hope you got your attacks in during the "I won't Evade this turn" window. That's where a CE with Ignore Invincibility (or Sure Hit, in that case) shines. Even at the cost of some starting NP gauge.

[DaedalusMkV]

To be fair, a starting NP charge is valuable once, and in short fights. Once you actually use that NP, your NP doesn't immediately pop back up to 50% - that bonus is gone, leaving you with half a CE's worth of benefits. Fine in a short fight or while farming, crappy in a drag-out boss fight or CQ. By contrast, a permanent Ignore Invincibility buff is mostly worthless in a short fight - which you might end before it even becomes an issue, or use a Servant's active skills to bypass - but potentially invaluable in a long, drawn-out fight or CQ. I remember one challenge against Shishou and Doggo, where if you beat one, the other would immediately start spamming Evade, and you really had to hope you got your attacks in during the "I won't Evade this turn" window. That's where a CE with Ignore Invincibility (or Sure Hit, in that case) shines. Even at the cost of some starting NP gauge.

I'm certainly not saying that it's bad. Though starting NP is often valuable even in very hard content, barring very specific team compositions. With a lot of Servants 50% NP at start might be the difference between getting your NP twice or once before you go down, for example. Or even not at all, if you're up against one of those damage-race Berserker boss fights or something. I was more pointing out that Ignore Invincible comes at a much steeper opportunity cost than Sure Hit does, so most of the time you're probably better off with the Sure Hit CEs unless you specifically need to deal with Invincibility spammers (or you're up against Casters, because 35% damage up is probably worth the CE slot even without Ignore Invincible).

If you're up against a boss fight that spams the heck out of some sort of hard invulnerability? Yes, give yourself the ability to ignore that. If the enemy has a 50% chance of Evading each turn I'd value True Shot over Kaleidoscope every single time, and Trueshot costs half as much.

[NeoPhoenix0]

I've already finished lb3 but ignore invulnerability completely slipped my mind for some reason... I really went hard mode for the boss fights and guard fight didn't I.

On the other hand I finally got DSS going with np1 berzerkalot and np 1 valkyrie. So the free quests are stupidly easy.

Gotta say though outa my DSS servants valkyrie, berzerkalot, parvati, atalanta (sadly all np1) valkyrie while the most difficult to level skills on seems far and above the most rewarding outside of saber fights.

[Saambell]

I've just lost all drive to play LB3. Given its the last Lostbelt I'm going to subject myself to*, I guess I can make it last. First time I need it done is for New Years, but even then I can't think of anything from there I want or need. And then after that its not until LB3.5 that I need to finish it, which is April or something. Only on Chapter 9, on the final arrow, so still a long way to go. And I haven't even come close to the Hard fights yet. But its just such a slog that I really am not feeling it. The story has yet to get any grip on me, besides "oh no poison" and even then nothing yet has occurred to make me think they are any step closer to solving anything. Like, right now all I'm doing is stopping the one guy who is trying to accomplish anything. And then the pointless backstab occurred because of course, and now I'm fighting the Spider and the Mask again, this time with 5 layers of health between them, with one of them wiping my party every 5 turns if I'm lucky. The time I tried it I did a silly and tried to have a Gilgamesh/Merlin wombo combo in the back line to remove several health bars, but then they came out in parts losing the whole point of them, then only succeeded on taking out Mask and 2 of Spider's health bars, before it came down to the question of "can a Merlin with a Attack Down, but with his Charisma applied, find a way to do 100k damage in one turn with 50-90% chances for crits" and the answer was very much how you expect. And so now I waited for my seals to come back, and I just cant bring myself to try again. If I end up using my seals twice by chapter 10, how the heck am I going to last later on? Sure, a few of those fights I feel I got solid counters to, but its the principal of the thing really.

*Until LB5.5 suddenly needs LB5.2 finished, when LB4.5 only needs LB1 finished, though LB3.5 needs LB3 so not too odd. But LB5.5 seems to be aiming for a Shimousa tie in, so not too much of a drive to play that.

[Velaryon]

Yeah, difficulty creep is really getting noticeable, and from a few scattered Youtube videos I've seen (mostly showing off broken combos that average players will never be able to pull off) it looks like it's only going to get worse. I expect someday down the line it will reach a point where it saps my desire to play, but I'm not there yet.

[Saambell]

As someone who always skipped challenge quests in events, the story becoming a series of challenge quests sits wrong with me. I'm just glad we get a stretch of 2ish years before there's an event that needs another Lostbelt finished after LB3. Guess if I have to I can take my time and use seals every chapter. But its going to be a real slog.

[Velaryon]

As someone who always skipped challenge quests in events, the story becoming a series of challenge quests sits wrong with me. I'm just glad we get a stretch of 2ish years before there's an event that needs another Lostbelt finished after LB3. Guess if I have to I can take my time and use seals every chapter. But its going to be a real slog.

For what it's worth, my understanding is that the upcoming holiday event requires LB completion, and is also not getting a rerun next year for whatever reason. So our next welfare servant (and a special class, no less) is a one-time-only if the info I've been given is correct.

[Saambell]

For what it's worth, my understanding is that the upcoming holiday event requires LB completion, and is also not getting a rerun next year for whatever reason. So our next welfare servant (and a special class, no less) is a one-time-only if the info I've been given is correct.

It only needs LB1 luckily. New Years has an event that needs LB3. And the reason I heard for this Holiday event not getting a rerun is it copied a popular manga, and the publisher got mad and threatened to sue if they did it again. Which naturally has me wondering if we will even get the first run if its a legal issue.

[Resileaf]

It only needs LB1 luckily. New Years has an event that needs LB3. And the reason I heard for this Holiday event not getting a rerun is it copied a popular manga, and the publisher got mad and threatened to sue if they did it again. Which naturally has me wondering if we will even get the first run if its a legal issue.

Apparently that's an unfounded rumor and the real reason it didn't get a re-run was because of Covid delays making a story chapter happen at the same time so they just cancelled the Christmas rerun.

[NeoPhoenix0]

Apparently that's an unfounded rumor and the real reason it didn't get a re-run was because of Covid delays making a story chapter happen at the same time so they just cancelled the Christmas rerun.

The timeline doesn't be seem to add up for that. If it was due to delays it seems extremely unlikely to been covid related. As the rerun would have happened in late November last year before covid related stuff.

[Saambell]

The timeline doesn't be seem to add up for that. If it was due to delays it seems extremely unlikely to been covid related. As the rerun would have happened in late November last year before covid related stuff.

Agreed, the rerun would have been November 2020, and they still fit in a whole new Christmas event, as well as Olympus. Though at the time the anime was airing so they put out a week long thing for that, as well as a Downloads Campaign which lasted 2 weeks. After those they did a new Christmas event rather then a rerun, followed hotly by Atlantis. And if it was due to delays, we would have seen the rerun this year, due to them having all the time in the world to do reruns given how threadbare this year has been in events. Seriously, two side story arcs, back to back, with no sign of an actual Christmas event? One of which was more of a second summer event? Perfect time for reruns as they would likely be a lot easier to do then whole new events, but they then put out brand new big story events back to back. It feels odd.

[Resileaf]

My very bad, it wasn't Covid, it was a typhoon. It delayed the Saber Wars 2 announcement and event which caused the entire schedule for the rest of the year to be screwed up, and the Christmas re-run suffered from it.

As for why they didn't run it in the dead year, I assume they decided they didn't want to make a Christmas event in a random place of the year.

[spectralphoenix]

Spoiler: LB3

Show

I agree with Fel that it felt pretty short overall. I kind of feel like there was a beginning and ending, but no middle. You're hanging out at the starting village, get jumped by the crypter early, your team gets stolen and you need to rescue them... OK, you're storming the gates of the castle now, boss rush time!

As far as the bosses themselves go, the Xiang Yu with backup fights were definitely the hardest - I guess Xiang Yu heavily favors the target with the lowest health, and getting hit three time in a turn will lay the hurt on anyone. In the second fight I found the best way was to split up the damage some and use Merlin to block the first assassin NP so you don't spend too long facing three Xiang actions. Medea was actually MVP against Li Shuwen - I kitted her out with the Black Grail and spammed her NP to get rid of most of his buffs (note that the "deals more damage as hp drops" buff he starts with IS removable.) Had a pretty smooth road against the guard rush - Lancelot with Sweet Crystal backed by Waver and Skadi took care of business in a flurry of NPs. And I pretty much steamrolled Qin via gacha luck - I had Jalter, Shinjuku, Gorgon, and Support Jalter all lined up for a rare chance at class advantage, with Merlin slinging the buffs.

Characterwise, the Yu Mei-ren/Xiang Yu plot was pretty good, but it seems kind of weird to end it with summoning them into your service. I feel like it would take more than a few lines of post-summon dialog to resolve those issues, at least in her case. I was kind of iffy about the emperor at first but I warmed up to him. Most of the other new characters really just seemed to be there to fill out the gacha banners or give the important people someone to exposit to. Mordred, Jing Ke, and Spartacus had some good bits though.

All in all it was alright. Maybe not as tragic as LB2, but I don't think I could take that level of pathos in every story chapter anyway.