The 6th anniversary in JP FGO brought a number of changes. Servant Coins, Append Skills, level 120, and a new yet familiar SSR. For the purposes of this article, let us focus on farming, which makes up a large proportion of the game.

Appends and Servant Coins

See these pages if that sounds unfamiliar: 6th Anniversary changes Append Skills

With the 6th anniversary, all Servants can now obtain 3 new passives, known as Append Skills. All servants have the same first and second Append Skill, which is great as the most useful Append Skill when it comes to farming usage is the second, the starting charge 10% – 20%. With 120 servant coins of the respective servant, one can unlock this skill which provides a one-time starting charge of 20% at max level. For an SSR, 120 servant coins can be gained by rolling a single copy and raising them to Bond 6.

1. Apart from the obvious use with non-MLB scope and 30% self-chargers, it can also be used with 50% charge CEs such as Tenkihime or Aerial Drive together with another 30% charge, such as from Caster Artoria’s first skill.
2. A 30% self-charge DPS with the second Append Skill at max level can instantly NP with Reines/Zhuge Liang (or any other 30+20 charge support) in a CE-agnostic fashion.

However, please remember that this is not always a replacement for a Superscope, as a Superscope will also provide a 2000 ATK at level 100. Furthermore, going from level 1 to level 10 costs a significant amount of materials, with a lore to max it completely at the end, and thus it is not viable to append everyone.

Vitch

Tamamo Vitch, or if we are going off her official Saint Graph name Koyanskaya of Light, is the new 6th Anniversary servant.

1. Her appeal is clearly not because of her 50% Buster buff steroid she provides, since the previous Buster support, Merlin, already provides the same amount with an additional 20% attack up on his first skill. For the purpose of comparison, let us ignore the special attack against Man attribute, since it is a situational buff that does not apply to all nodes (similar to Caster Artoria’s Anti-Threat to Humanity, though of course, an Anti-Man attribute damage is much more practical).
2. The most important thing we must note is the amount of charge she brings - a single target 50%. While it seems to lose out when compared to Caster Artoria or Zhuge Liang’s teamwide charge, this is somewhat of a step up from Merlin’s party-wide 20% charge. Buster used to be the only card type that did not possess their own 50% charger that also grants a 50% card performance up, with other card types having Skadi for Quick, and Caster Artoria for Arts. Compared to the 20% charge, it certainly seems lacking. With this 50% for Buster, they can finally compete with other card types when it comes to farming.

There are several compositions that Vitch allows. The most prominent would be the possibility of “Buster Loops”, once dismissed as a joke, is now no longer just a pipe dream. Using an AoE servant with 50% self-charge (or pseudo-50, such as Saber Artoria and Mordred), 2 Tamamo Vitch, and starting with a MLB Kaleidoscope, the DPS can NP 3 times in a row without the use of the Chaldea Combat Uniform Mystic Code. At this point, one might question — How can the DPS charge their NP to 100% with only 150%?

This is where Vitch’s Cooldown Reduction, which might seem useless at first glance, comes into play. Most 50% charge skills possess a 6 turns cooldown, if not 5 turns. Since 2 Vitches contribute a total of -4CD, one can bring the Atlas Mystic Code and reduce that by another 2, thus effectively allowing the DPS to use their charge skill twice in a single battle. Thus, 100% from a MLB Kaleidoscope, 2×50% from 2 Vitches, and 2×50% from the DPS using their charge twice, which in total allows the DPS to NP 3 times. Below is an example of Mordred, a pseudo 50% Servant with 2 Vitches. Mordred has a 6T cooldown on her 30% charge, and a flat 20% after NP, which works nicely enough. Artoria works better as her charge is 5CD, which allows you to use another MC instead of Atlas.

Here’s a more conventional example of a DPS with a 50% charge, who also happens to be related to the previous Servant.

Here’s another example, though this does have some RNG in wave 2. Here we see the potential of Vitch’s S2 being used for pesky 1 enemy waves. S2 can of course be used to simply guarantee crits for wave 1, thus allowing the DPS to hold an event CE instead of a charge CE.

Now here’s where things get a little trippy. What if we use someone like Emiya instead? With S3, he can change to an Arts NP, which potentially allows him to loop too, either by using Atlas or Plugsuit. Or what about Fae Knight Lancelot?

Oberon

Okay, that’s still fine and understandable. But what about Oberon? Released with Avalon Le Fae’s conclusion Campaign, it seems like he overpowers Vitch significantly with an additional party-wide 20% charge and 30% NP Damage Up, a skill that doubles the target’s NP Damage Up (which also applies to CEs like Black Grail),and not to mention a targetable 50%  charge and 50% Buster Up, which are both integral parts of Vitch’s kit.

So here’s how it measures up. Looping with double Oberon on an AoE servant with 50% self-charge and MLB Kaleidoscope is viable if you can provide an extra 10% charge such as through a Mystic Code. However, for the first wave the DPS would be stuck without any buffs from Oberon and on the second wave they would only receive a 60% NP Damage Up buff from the 2 Oberons. Because the buffs provided by his third skill only lasts for 1 turn and puts the affected servant into Eternal Sleep the turn after, Oberon's third skill is only usable on the third wave.

This means that while it is very viable and does bigger damage on wave 3, you would do lower damage compared to double Vitch on the first 2 waves, so it's not outright better. However, what about using both Oberon and Vitch? or perhaps even using him as a replacement for a second support of the other two card types?

Here’s an example of Caster Cu, who received a very strong buff from LB6. He actually has the potential to do 5s, if his damage is not lacking. However, since he is a story-locked 3 star, I’d find it hard to have NP5 CasCu.

Vitch + Oberon setups also allow you to borrow a friend’s DPS servant, which makes it slightly easier for F2P players with low NP levels on their DPS servants. It might be better to compare Oberon to Zhuge Liang, as both of their major damage buffs are not strictly limited to any card type. Below, Caster Artoria is used with Oberon to help Lancelot deal with W1 and W2 while Oberon helps to boost Fae Knight Lancelot’s NP damage to acceptable values in W3 as well as providing his 70% charge. Even when considering his third skill, the doubling up of NP Damage Up buffs are still applicable on non-Buster NPs. In fact, it can be said that Oberon is better when compared to Zhuge Liang as pointed out on the comparison before.

Furthermore, if one does not mind the use of plugsuit, it is possible to use 2 Vitch with Oberon for 30% charge servants, such as Arjuna Alter.

It is however important to note that compared to Vitch, Oberon’s role is admittedly more universal if one considers the first 2 skills. Even with S3, the real unique part is actually the doubling up of NP Damage Up buffs, not the 50% Buster buff. In fact, it can be said that Oberon is better when compared to Zhuge Liang, as both have a party-wide 20% charge and 30% NP Strength Up and Attack Up buffs respectively. It is also very important not to underestimate Oberon’s potential damage support, as the damage support he provides is very, very high.

At the same time, at some point the amount of damage just becomes excessive, and can be inefficient in terms of plug, CEs or just bond for Oberon. To put it more bluntly, if double Vitch does the job, why bother plugging Oberon to satisfy yourself?

The answer to this is that there is indeed still one area in which high damage is needed regularly. Raids, such as those from the Case Files or Apocrypha events. These raid quests often provide efficient rates for multiple materials all at once, allowing one to quickly gather multiple of them at the same time. These raids are also only 1 wave, which means that using Oberon's 3rd skill does not have any adverse side effects if done properly.

Is there any place for Merlin?

Unfortunately, in farming, there is little to no place for Merlin. Even if one were to argue for his 20% attack buff and charge, Oberon gives more buffs for NPs along with an extra 50% charge which can be used for a better CE. If one were to argue for his 50% Buster buff and crits, Vitch has them for 3 turns, although her crit buff is 50% instead of 100% and only for Buster cards. However she has 20 crit stars which can substitute for Ox King or another CE.

If we compare the NP damage potential that Merlin provides with Oberon when it comes to raids, we can see that Merlin does not even come close to matching Oberon.

Above, Kintoki is used as an example as he is very widely used for raids due to his 50% charge and high universal damage, not to mention his short NP animation. The above calculations are made at NP5 and without CE. Most raids also have event bonus damage CEs, which usually start at 100% bonus damage at non-MLB and 200% at MLB. If using Black Grail and Oberon, the 60% NP Damage Up from a non-MLB Black Grail is doubled to 120%, which is already higher than the non-MLB event bonus damage CEs. If MLB, then it's not quite comparable, as an MLB Black Grail’s damage increases exponentially to 160% NP Damage Up, combined with its 2400 ATK stat increase at max level, it also invalidates most event bonus damage CEs unless the bonus damage they provide is super high like ONILAND. Furthermore, with Oberon and his 70% charge, one only needs to find a 30% charge DPS, or bring along someone like Vitch to charge to full for a DPS with no charge.

Of course, if you’re just doing Story or Challenge Quests, Merlin can still be used for the other utilities that he provides. Garden of Avalon and Illusion are still fine for the aforementioned scenarios.

Conclusion

So. Why Buster then? It seems like a lot of work, especially since most of the Buster comps are 5 slots, whereas Castoria’s Arts comps can be 6 slots. The answer to this is the presence of Lv90+ nodes, where the node’s enemies may not be strictly 3 enemies per wave, which in turn affects refund. Buster has the advantage of not caring for enemy count unlike the other two card types, as it purely relies on charge, hence a wave that consists of 1, 2, or 3 enemies are pretty much the same.

Here’s a nice sheet with possible XVV combinations, credits to cordial#5530

Credits

Thanks to Hoshi#0001 for designing the banner. Thanks to CrabNGarlicButter#0287, VladTheImpala#4313, Ratentaisou#6437 and 007starz#7667 for proofreading.

Every Chaldean master has had that moment; you look upon your collection of Servants, bronzes to silvers to those gleaming golds, and gets overwhelmed at the number of resources and investments all these Servants must mean.

While in an ideal world, all Servants would have max level and max skills, everyone must start with that first step, with that first Servant. This article aims to break down the thinking process that goes behind choosing which Servants to level first and, subsequently, which skills to focus on to ease the burden on players when it comes to managing their Chaldea efficiently.

This article will also use terms and abbreviations unique to the FGO community, the definitions of which have been neatly and conveniently compiled together here:

Fate/Grand Order Glossary

Fate/Grand Order has a considerable amount of terms that are crucial forunderstanding the game’s mechanics. Having a knowledge of these terms anddefinitions can greatly improve the strategies and team compositions thatMasters can utilize in quests. In addition to this, it can also improve under…

Atlas AcademyNet

As the North America FGO server winds down from a successful lotto season after GilFest, many players will find themselves with lots of embers, QP, skill gems, and certain mats to enhance their Servants. This article hopes to help players create their own priority checklist to level their Servants as effectively as possible. As with the blog's nature, many of the considerations make here will place efficiency and gameplay elements at the top. Still, the players are free to put their own personal rankings of Servants to show their love for them should they choose to.

Table of Contents

Leveling Servants

When faced with the dilemma of choosing which Servants to level first due to a lack of ascension materials, embers, QP, or any combination thereof, having a priority list to go down becomes more important. This is especially true for Servants whose ascension materials are rare or tedious to farm. For example, Napoleon was released alongside the 2nd Lostbelt and required a whopping 29 Gunpowder to ascend a 3rd time and another 132 for his skills. While Gunpowder as a material has an average 30.6 AP/drop (value courtesy of Atlas Academy's drop lookup tool), it was a very new material at the time of his release and therefore was not featured in shops or exchange tickets. So the natural choice for people who wanted to level him fast was to farm those manually in Lostbelt 1.

While that was only the example of Napoleon, the situation above is universal. At some point in their FGO career, most players will run out of materials to level their next Servants or raise their skills. And this is when having a strong lineup of Servants geared towards farming, farmers for short, can mean the difference between slight annoyance and loss of sanity when farming. This article will go a bit more in-depth about the extensive role farming has in this game later, but for now, let’s answer a very crucial question:

Who are farmers?

While technically speaking, almost any Servants can be used for farming, not all of them can do so efficiently or in a way that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out after a couple runs. There are two main categories of farmers, those with AoE NPs and those with ST NPs, each with their own quirks but otherwise very similar in usage: use NP to kill enemies as fast and efficiently as possible.

Considering that most nodes, up to the point of this article, feature waves that have more than 1 enemy in each, having a Servant with an AoE NP can, quite literally, kill two or three birds with one stone. This saves you the trouble of unleashing a devastating ST NP on a mob, only to have to use face cards for the other two enemies on the waves, draining both your time and sanity. At this point, you might point out my contradiction about having a category for ST farmers a few lines above. While it is true ST NPs don't contribute much to some nodes, there are farming nodes that feature one or even two waves with a single high HP boss that requires the use of a ST Servant to kill cleanly, such as Des Moines to farm Claws of Chaos or Dragon Palace for Divine Wine.

So eliminating a portion of Servants who have non-damaging NPs (though some of these can act as fantastic farmer support, more on that later), any other Servants can be good farmers right? It's not quite that simple. If you happen to have 3 MLBScope, you might get access to your NP immediately, but this is not the case for most of the player base. Even then, you have to take into account whether your NP can kill the waves or not. This brings us to the other two components of a good farmer: batteries and steroids. When a Servant has one or both of these components, they fix the two problems above respectively, charge and damage. Using a Servant with their own battery removes the need to have an MLBScope or running a support charger to fill their NP gauge. This can drastically increase your choice in CEs and support Servants, making your farming runs much more comfortable. This flexibility allows a much wider variety of comps to be used for different nodes as well as some CEs like Aerial Drive and Holy Night Supper, which offer a lot more offensive potential than a Superscope.

The next component to consider when looking at farmers is their steroids. While using your NPs is nice, it doesn't mean much during farming if your enemies aren't dead (or very close to death) at the end of it. Steroids offer a large part of your damage potential and will allow you to clear waves that an unbuffed Servant won't do, no matter their NP level. In fact, your steroids contribute a proportionately large amount to your farmers' damage compared to simply raising their NP level, which takes more a lot more gacha rolling. Consider the examples below of NP1 Servants using all their skills at max level compared to their NP5 counterpart with no self buffs applied in terms of damage with class advantage: (damage calculated with all current JP buffs at the time of writing)

As you can see, steroids play a vital role in boosting a Servant's farming capability in a way that alternatives without self buffs often get outclass or simply delegated to clearing smaller nodes/waves, drastically lowering your farming potential.

If you are new to the game or find your farming roster to be lacking, our friend Aria has written a very detailed yet concise guide on the first few farmers to invest in first, starting the proverbial snowball of farmers that will farm for your future Servants.

Servant Starter List & Efficiency Guide

Beginner Servant Starter List & Efficiency Guide: Preface (READ THIS FIRST): -The purpose of this guide is to provide new players with a streamlined overview of which servants to focus on leveling and upgrading on a fresh account, as well as context based on the currently accepted standards of ef...

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However, if you have had those raised and are looking for more options in your farming roster, here are a few other farmers that are worth consideration due to their versatility and/or efficiency. There are many more Servants who can be good farmers if they have the criteria above, but these highlights will feature Servants who are relatively easy to acquire as they are in the permanent Servant pool, meaning they can spook you at any time.

Nitocris (Caster)

Depending on the FGO community you've been to, this choice is either the most obvious or surprising. While her damage is nothing to boast about compared to other, more famous, farming Casters like Nero, her kit is nothing to scoff at. Her main appeal is her battery, which scales from 60% to a staggering 120%, which means you can just leave it at level 8 to achieve a full 102% NP charge. The ability to use her NP instantly by herself makes her a prime choice for people who prefer to have lots of flexibility in their CEs. She can carry a CE from Da Vinci shop, giving you more XP/bond or, more relevantly, free up a slot for lotto CE during lotto season. There are other, less obvious perks to using Nitocris as a farmer that our friends Cloud and Kozakura talked about more intensively.

Optimizing your Gameplay - From Clears to Clicks

Lottos are approaching - Optimize your gameplay for better farming

Atlas AcademyCloud

Astolfo (Rider)

Memes about him aside, Astolfo is an excellent farming Rider, especially for those without Francis Drake. With a 50% battery and an attack up steroid, he can be used with event CEs, 50% charge CEs, or if you have Scope and some external chargers like Skadi, Astolfo can clear 2 waves by himself. With this flexibility, he can be very versatile for many different nodes, especially as you get more NP levels for him.

Cu Chulainn (Prototype)

While he is also featured in Aria's starter guide above, his niche is useful enough, even for whales and veterans, that it is worth mentioning again. His main power comes from his S3, which gives him a 100% PM when hitting Beasts, which plays a crucial role in killing the big final mob on wave 3 for some free quests. As such, he excels at killing Hydras for Wine and Chimeras for Claws. As a final cheery on top, Cu is Sky attribute, which gives him another 10% damage boost against most of his Beast targets who are predominantly Earth-attribute. This solidifies him in the top position as a ST Lancer against Beasts, even out-damaging welfare SRs.

Helena

Helena is a very interesting Servant to consider since she works as both a support and wave-clearer by herself. She has a 20% team battery, which, while less impressive than top tier support Casters like Waver or Skadi, still gives a cheaper alternative to charge your team's NP, including her own. She also has a 3T team-wide color buff for all card types. This will increase your team's overall NP damage if you need the extra push to clear a wave. Her second skill is more self-centered and plays into her secondary role as a wave clearer. While her damage is too weak to clear wave 3 of most free quests, she is still strong enough to clear wave 1 or wave 2 if she manages to land her NP buff skill. This allows for comps where she uses all her skills on turn 1, charging and buffing the team, use her NP to clear the wave, and your team moves into waves 2 and 3 with 20% more charge and 20% card mod buff. This split charge comes in especially helpful even for veterans who want to use Servants who lack enough battery to charge themselves.

There is a multitude of other Servants who can be excellent farmers, some more accessible than others. Our friend Souless has made a document outlining choices on the SR ticket from a farming-oriented perspective, which features many permanent SR Servants who can spook your rolls at any time.

SR Ticket Recommendation Breakdown

SR Ticket Recommendation Breakdown Credit: Souless, edits by Zelot and Toraso ------------- Recommended Servants to Pick off Ticket -------------- (Note: these units are not ordered) Nitocris - Easy to use with 100% charge and an AoE NP, you can use her to double NP with a Kaleidoscope, or j...

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Farmer supports

It will be an incomplete look at the game's farming aspects if the big supports in the game don't get a mention. People like Waver, Skadi in NA, and Caster Artoria (Castoria) in JP play a crucial role in one's farming comp despite having non-damaging NPs. Their skills provide unrivaled support for your DPS farmers, allowing them to clear nodes they otherwise would not be able to or makes nodes they can clear more comfortable to run. Some supports even brought new farming meta such as XSS looping with 2 Skadi and a Quick AoE DPS Servant or double Castoria looping that allow a single Servant to clear all 3 waves by themselves with considerable flexibility in CEs and Servant choice. The most prominent supports in this role are:

Waver, Mr. Worldwide of comps, fitting himself into almost any comps regardless of card type. His strengths lie in his 3 battery skills (20% team-wide and 50% for a single Servant) and a 30% attack buff on his S3. He also has usage in CQs and hard contents thanks to the DEF and crit buff.

Skadi, the newest sensation in NA FGO, features a kit that allows for a certain comp archetype known as XSS looping, utilizing 2 Skadi and a Quick AoE Servant to clear 3 waves by themselves. Even outside of XSS, Skadi is still a fantastic support for any farming team with her 50% battery, AoE DEF down, and a 3 turn Quick steroid for one Servant.

Castoria caused waves when she was first announced in JP FGO, featuring an unprecedented skill set built for NP looping, especially for Arts Servants. Her battery skills (30% team-wide and 50% on one Servant) along with Arts steroid and NP gain buff heralded in a new farming meta using two Castorias. On her own, she is still the premier support Servant for any farming comp, especially ones focused on Arts.

Leveling skills on Servants

So now you've leveled all your farmers and decided to take them out to a node, only to realize their performance is rather lackluster, to say the least. Their damage is low, and sometimes they don't even get enough NP charges. A Servant's skill levels are just as important as their level, fou, and NP level. As seen in the chart above, NP1 Servants with proper maxed skills out-damage their NP5 counterparts with no buffs. But each of these Servants has 3 skills, and leveling all of them up to max might take a large amount of materials that you might not have on hand immediately. As with Servants, not all skills are created equal, and some are more worthy of being focused on first to maximize a Servant's potential. Identifying the proper order to level skills will allow you to have an easier time managing your materials while still enjoying the most potential out of your Servants. To start off with the first skill that should be looked at on any Servant kit, if they have it, the battery.

Battery skills

There are two main types of battery, one at the top of the priority list and one near the last. Scalable batteries are NP charge skill that scales with level. These are skills that at level 1 might only fill up a small part of the NP gauge but at level 10 will charge much more. Due to the prominence of NPs in farming, scalable batteries provide unrivaled flexibility to a Servant's game plan as well as their potential CE and teammate choices. The higher you bring these scalable batteries, the easier you will find ways to fill the rest of the bar to NP right away with the Servant. In a game where you always go first, having instant access to your NPs means the enemies might never get a turn to attack, not only decreasing the damage your team is taking but, more importantly, halving the amount of time it takes to clear a quest. These batteries become even more important in team comps where you are utilizing NP refunds or any looping strategy for your Servants, such as Jeanne d'Arc (Archer), whose battery scales from 20% to 40%. Even missing 1% on a scalable battery might mean the difference between NP'ing a second or third time or get stuck at 98% NP bar coming into the next wave.

On the contrary, there are battery skills where the charge is flat, which means that at level 1, it provides as much charge as at level 10. Well, known examples of these skills are Waver's skills, which are all flat batteries at 30-10-10 value, or Bedivere's S2, which provides a flat 30% charge to himself even at level 1. These skills are much lower on the priority list as their most valuable buff is already at max value, even at level 1. Of course, exceptions exist like Waver's S3, but only because they fall under the next categories in the skills pecking order.

Okay, batteries are used to fill Servant's NP gauge to 100% easier, but what if CEs like Scope are available and level 1 battery skills can still give Servants access to their NP? Well, technically true, but leveling batteries will allow much more flexibility in team comps and CEs that might provide them with more damage, which might be crucial to clearing a wave. Some whales or veteran players can run triple Superscope comps, but those comps have the same pitfall, the fact that Superscope has minimal offensive potential compared to lesser charge CEs but has a lot more offensive capabilities.

These are examples of Servants whose battery scales up to 50% at max level, allowing players to run them with Aerial Drive, a welfare CE, to achieve much more damage than a Superscope, which is drastically harder to obtain. Even for players who have superscopes, maxing a battery might allow them to double NP with Waver or any 50% charger, even if they have no refund capability.

For an in-depth look at how having a maxed battery skill become essential to clearing a node, look no further than NA’s recent Lostbelt 2 Aurora Steel node, Castle of Ice and Snow:

This comp perfectly demonstrates the usefulness of having max battery skills for both someone with Superscope and non-Scope CEs. Ereshkigal battery being at max allows her to NP a second time, giving Okita Alter a 40% charisma buff. Okita Alter having her battery maxed at 30%, allows her to run a 50% charge offensive CE (Aerial Drive) with Waver's 20% team-wide charge to clear the last wave of Valkyries. Any of those battery skills being even one level lower would have ruined that comp from being a perfect no-RNG 3 turn comp.

Support batteries

There isn't really a lot of difference when it comes to supports with battery skills for your team. If they have scalable batteries like Skadi or Castoria, you should definitely max them to give your team more flexibility. Supports like Waver or Merlin has static charge and so their battery can be left alone at 1, except Waver's S3, which has a scaling attack buff and so should be maxed.

Steroid skills

Now that your Servants can properly charge their NP and fire them before the enemies' turn, you might run into another problem, your NP isn't killing them. While, in some cases, it might be a problem of you simply not having a strong enough Servant or they don't have enough NP level, you can take steps to minimize these low rolls and maybe push your Servants past that threshold of not clearing a wave. Steroid skills are a farmer's bread and butter; the bulk of their damage potential and, as shown above, can most of the time compensate for a lower NP level Servant if adequately leveled. Like batteries, there are also scalable steroids and non-scalable steroids, and the same rule applies: if a buff scales in value, it's way more useful to level than skills whose buff don't scale with level. For example, leveling Parvati's steroid skill, which scales her attack from 30% to 50% depending on the level, is more material-efficient than leveling Orion (the Artemis version) skill - a static 20% attack buff.

Leveling steroids are usually less pressing than leveling battery skills because some Servants might have enough raw stats to power through a wave even if their buffs aren't maxed. While you are encouraged to level these buffs as high as possible on farmers to get the most potential out of them and also more support and CE flexibility, materials should be focused more on scaling battery skills since NP charge is universal across nodes and can't be power through with pure stats alone.

Buff stacking

One common dilemma that you might encounter when leveling steroids for Servants is that some might have more than just one steroid skill. While the ideal situation is you have enough materials to level both to as high as possible, sometimes you will have to pick and choose. To answer which buff has more priority, it's important to look at a concept in FGO called buff stacking.

To maximize your damage, you will want various buffs from different types to take advantage of the multiplicative modifier between them. From this, it's easier to see which steroids will be more beneficial to focus on for DPS Servants, primarily by looking at their supports. Since varied buff types is preferred, the focus should be on buffs that the supports do not provide, or provide disproportionately compared to other types.

Case study: Jalter Zerker

Looking at her skill set, her S1 does not contribute to her NP or her damage output in any way, so it's a choice between her S2 and S3. While her S3 has an NP battery along with a steroid, usually placing it at top priority, but the battery is flat at 20%, so only the buster buff scales with level. If the team has Summer Jalter paired more often with someone like Waver, he will provide her with a 30% attack buff with his S3 at max. Therefore, to maximize damage output, the focus is first on her buster buff, so the two types stacked multiplicatively, resulting in a larger damage buff percentage. However, if she's paired with Shakespeare instead, he will provide her with a 40% buster buff with his S1 max, making her attack buff a better choice to level first. Another common buffer for her is Merlin, who has both an attack buff and a buster buff on his kit. However, his attack buff is only 20% while his buster up is 50%, so it's better invest more in Jalter's attack buff to get the maximum amount of buff stacking possible. This can be neatly summarized in the chart below, which assumes the support has maxed skill while Jalter only has one of her steroids maxed to compare the damage difference of proper buff stacking.

While the difference shown isn't large compared to the total, the difference will increase more as more buffs are applied, or as other buff types are added to the equation like PM and NP buff. More than that, a small difference sometimes can be the difference between having a no-RNG comp and one that sometimes fail on a minroll and is definitely something to consider when dealing with material shortage. There is also a strategy to maximize buff stacking by leveling a buff halfway, then using the remaining materials to level the others halfway. If the player aims to optimize the efficiency of their materials used, it is a factor to consider.

Support steroids

As always, supports, for the most part, follow the same guideline as DPS Servants. If they have a skill with a scaling steroid buff, those should be leveled, such as Waver's S3 or Skadi S1 and S2. This will allow more flexibility in your DPS damage range and, therefore, their CE and teammate choices.

Other skills to level

Now having covered a majority of skill types on Servants, especially farmers. At this point, your farmers will have reached, or come very close, to their full potential, and you can breathe a sigh of relief as the days of spending 12T carding through a free quest is long gone. Now you have materials from farming, and you want to invest in other skills for your Servants, whether to use them outside of pure farming or to show your love and appreciation for them. So, which one do you focus on next? Sadly, after those two main categories, the lines blur between the other buff types, and how useful they are on a Servant depends greatly on the Servant's role in a team and your goal in using those Servants in non-farming scenarios. While this article cannot provide a concrete guideline for skills past this point, our friend has written a fantastic article on how to define your goals for a quest and for the game in general. From those goals, you can determine how each skill plays into this goal and level them accordingly.

The importance of defining your goals

When answering the question “what is good”, there are many factors that need tobe taken into consideration, some of which this article will attempt to address. Proper contextualization What does it mean to contextualize? Servants can only be considered good or badif they are compared within the …

Atlas AcademySome guy with a dream

Using lore on skills

So now you've known to level your skills in the proper order, but you have these shiny Crystallized Lore lying around from events that can take your skills a step further to level 10. However, these are rare, much rarer than simple free quest materials, since they cannot be farmed normally. They are only available from events or from the RP shop, and as such more thought and care will have to go into using them than when you're using normal materials. So, which Servants and which skills are worthy of these lores?

Scaling battery skills in FGO have a unique property; they only achieve their full potential when lored. This is because starting charge CEs have an even amount of charge, such as Aerial Drive 50% or Kaleidoscope 80%. If a battery scales from 10% to 20%, for example, at level 9, the skill will only charge your Servant 18%, 2% short of a full charge with Scope or AD with Waver's team charge, which defeats the purpose of having a battery skill to instantly NP. Due to this weird property, scaling battery skills will always need to be lored to level 10 to achieve their full potential for any team.

Steroid skills are a bit more forgiving than battery in that they can still perform a good portion of their function at level 9. While this means you won't be hitting their full potential for damage, for the majority of nodes, they might not need that extra push from level 9 to 10 in the first place, and you can save a lore. However, if you find a node that you struggle to clear consistently and find that loring a Servant's steroids will help increase that comp's consistency, it's recommended to do so. After all, lores are there to better your team, not just as decoration.

Using lore on supports

While supports with a flat charge like Waver are perfectly functional at 1/1/10 or even 1/1/9 for yourself, putting a support-focused Servant on your support list that is not 10/10/10 can be considered bait and might lead to some stricter players purging you for maybe messing up one of their runs due to a missed lore. Therefore, it is advisable to 10/10/10 all your support Servants before putting them up on the support list. This holds especially true for Servants whose skills do scale drastically with level and lore like Skadi or Castoria, and someone accidentally picking a non 10/10/10 from your list will scuff their runs, leading to some purging. The general consensus is that if your supports aren't 10/10/10, don't put them in the support list, especially Caster slot.

Why farming is important

Throughout the article, there is a heavy emphasis placed on farming in the game. Some of you might be wondering why "gameplay focused" articles like these are very much focused on farming and not challenging content. The answer is that there is simply no hard or end-game content to FGO, unlike most other games. Instead, most of the time, AP, resources, and other metrics you spend on the game will be to farm. Whether it is an event or a dead week, you will spend more time farming free quests than clearing CQs or story chapters.

For perspective, each event has, on average, 1 maybe 2 CQs for you to clear, and there are around 2 events per month. That makes the total number of CQs per year around 30. While these so-called “Challenge Quests” are supposed to be hard and reward you greatly with a lore when you beat them, the truth of the matter is that a majority of them can simply be cheese or trivialized using the friend support system, as shown by the solos featured in this collection by Arc or through a simple search on YouTube/Bilibili.

Arc-FGO/Chaldea-Combat-Records

This repository serves as a collection of gameplay videos from FGO. - Arc-FGO/Chaldea-Combat-Records

GitHubArc-FGO

While there will be a few CQs per year that you will need your own Servants properly raised to beat, these are far and few in between, and your Servant requirements might not be high either if you learn the CQ’s gimmicks beforehand.

As for the story, all of Arc 1 story and 3 out of 4 EoR Chapters can be solo with a friend's support, while Shimousa is entirely optional and can be left when you feel more comfortable with your account. This means you can clear the entirety of Arc 1 and most of Arc 1.5 with just a level 1 Georgios and Leonidas and some strong friends. As for the Lostbelt chapters, they do get progressively harder with each chapter and some of them do reuse the forced support format from Shimousa to make the fights more challenging and forcing you to have your own raised Servants. Just like un-soloable CQs, however, some of them can be cleared with minimal effort and investments if you know their gimmicks beforehand, like the Valkyrie and Sigurd fight in Lostbelt 2, where all you need is a leveled Caesar or Bedivere to win. Later chapters like Lostbelt 5 and 5.2 might require even more preparations. Still, at this point, your Chaldea will be a lot more developed and can easily take on these bosses without you ever needing to consciously focus on non-farming Servants or skills.

So with those two sources of content making up only around 5% of the game content per year, the other 95% is farming. Events will have the farming nodes; lottos will feature heavy farming with lots of appling, dead weeks will have you farm free quests to stockpile materials, ready to level your favorite Servants, or prepare for the QP and ember dump during lotto season. As such, having a strong roster of farming Servants will make your FGO experience a lot more enjoyable overall as you can simply breeze through FQs with 3 turn comps rather than tediously card your way through them every time you need some extra mats. Focusing on farming Servants will also create a snowball effect, in which the more farmers you have, the easier it is to farm for materials later, making it easier to raise more and better farmers, and the cycle continues until you have a solid line up and can procure materials to level your favorite Servants with little loss in sanity going through their mats (looking at you Eresh).

This interview is the first in a series which aims to introduce notable people in the FGO community. Hear their first hand accounts and perspectives about the game and much more!

Lyinne is known as a prominent farmer in some circles, or not at all in others. Some suspect they might be a robot, but if so, can they pass the Turing test?
If farming bores you, we recommend you read this article before sleep as an off-label treatment for insomnia.

The following interview was conducted on 26 Sep 2020, and has been edited for the sake of length and clarity.

Hi Lyinne, I'm glad you agreed to this interview. How are you? And since it is Gilfest now, how is farming going?

Hey Boris, the pleasure is mine. I’m good, farming’s good, there’s a lot to be grateful for in this crazy world right now, I’m not taking anything for granted.

What are the team comps you used this Gilfest?

I started with the typical DSS 5 slot comp. I prefer Dantes over Zerkerlot in particular because the runs are smoother - I prefer 3 turn NP gain.

After I started getting drops and MLB-ing my CEs I explored 6 slot comps. This is especially helpful when the difference of one slot is +2 drops, not +1.
Between different +6 slots comps, I strongly dislike ones that fish for NP charge and prefer comps where the majority of buffs are in one wave.

So, just a quick breakdown of my experience, with a disclaimer that these are not very innovative comps.

Round 1: The main problem here was actually finding Wavers with a MLB bonus CE - everyone was putting them on Skadi at first. This comp had a steep learning curve and was troublesome as the first wave had to be carded. So I had to quickly eye through the cards and estimate what combination will be able to clear the wave, if any. If there wasn’t, all buffs were held to wave 2.It got easier but still required more attention.
I eventually got the average clear time down to 2:05.

Round 2: I feel like it’s quite an elegant setup, and particularly enjoyed using it because I have barely used my Da Vinci before this. My Da Vinci is NP4, so the final wave’s damage is not as clean as it could be, but carding the remaining sliver was never an issue. I only failed runs when I accidentally used Waver’s buff on himself.

Round 3: The classic Jarcher setup. Double waver instead of Waver-Skadi allows me to skimp out of loring Paracelsus, and bypassing Musashi’s magic resistance.
A common theme is Jarcher is at NP4 instead of 5 so the damage wasn’t ideal, but more careful card selection on round 3 made it a non-issue.

How do you select what comps to use? Do you try to maximize bonus, per-refill efficiency, or do you just do comfortable comps?

I base my farming on the activities I’m doing during it - I try to pay as little attention to farming as possible. If I’m doing something that takes a lot of attention, I’ll default to comps that are simpler to execute. I focus on other things while keeping FGO in the corner of my eye. When stuff stops moving on screen, I react to it.

I aim to maximize my currency over time - not per run, but per hour. I find the latter takes into account comfort and compatibility with what else I’m doing at the moment.

Farming such large numbers of boxes must be taxing in many ways. Do you have some preferences when it comes to your setup - environment, ergonomics, tapping for so long..?

I feel like ergonomics matter more for streamers, since their environment is fixed. I’m way more flexible - I farm while working, reading, walking my dog, or other things. So I could have my phone propped up by the dining table, or by my computer, or be using a popsocket while walking my dogs, there are many possibilities!

What’s the biggest ember stack you’ve obtained while rolling boxes?

This is going to be really anti-climatic but probably 5. I use “collect all” until the last 100-200 boxes or so and don’t place such a high priority on stacking embers in inventory, which slows down rolling. I think this will continue since we know 5* embers are eventually added to the FP gacha.

Farming a massive amount of boxes in one lotto is impressive, but you have done it unfailingly throughout the years. How do you maintain such consistency and avoid burnout?

I have an unusual, polyphasic sleep cycle, so I usually take four 30 minutes naps a day. I get by fine on 2 hours of sleep a day, and have been for more than 10 years. This is not something I do for farming specifically, but it does come in handy. I don’t have the absolute best teams, or the fastest runs, I simply have more time.
Other times, I use the “extra” time to read, meditate, do jigsaw puzzles etc.

Author’s note: for the sake of professionalism, I have cut out the myriad swear words directed towards this unethical life hack and its unfairness, much to Lyinne's amusement.

One vital area I’ve gotten a lot better at over the past three years is the ability to multitask. My first big farming experience was the original run of the Da Vinci event. I farmed just over 500 boxes, and felt so cool for doing it.
Back then, I was barely able to farm while watching TV. Nowadays, I can do a lot more things that still allow me to tap my phone. In turn, farming becomes less intrusive.

The short answer is that I enjoy farming. If that changes one day, for any reason, I’ll reevaluate how much I’m farming, adjust and/or stop.

What gives you the drive to farm? Or to put it another way, why farm?

It is very satisfying! I love having all my servants max leveled, max skilled, and eventually max bonded.

I am a tad OCD. I get a sense of zen while immersed in that repetition, and delayed satisfaction after working hard for it. This is why I will never use bots, it defeats the whole point for me (Switch control to open boxes has been my only compromise).

Part of it is I like seeing what are the limits of what I can do. For example, the rush to 150 was fun and more intense than any lottery. The game got a new engine after a year of iOS struggles, so I wanted to see how fast I could get there. Free quests are also really great for bond, so that’s a bonus.
Shoutout to Ryuuji who was the first to get to 150, paced me and assured me I wasn’t insane.

How do you determine your goals? Do you aim for specific box numbers, mat counts, or do you have certain servant goals?

My goals heavily depend on my free time. Real life is more important to me than this game, so I try to set my goals accordingly. They’ve also changed drastically over time as I developed my account and became more committed to the game.

Short background - I started the game about a month after its release in NA, around the time Nerofest beta dropped. It was really for the historical and mythical characters and premise of the story.

The next year was when I decided I wanted to collect all the servants eventually and max everyone, which required a lot of farming. It also just happened that the next two lotteries both gave monuments, so after suffering through gem hell for a year, running out of even blue gems, I decided, never again. So when an opportunity arises in a lottery, say gears in Nerofest 1.0, I would farm as much as I would ever need, or up to two years into the future.

Nowadays, I am good on everything except new mats. This Gilfest I don’t actually need the mats, or have much of a QP sink. I want the aurora steel drops from round 3, and mostly need friend points from the boxes. Lotteries are still the most efficient way to get them, and I don’t believe I could run X-A during 2x FP events and stay sane for long.

As far as a specific box goal goes, I have a baseline and reach goals but keep them flexible. For Gilfest I was looking at 1,000 boxes as a baseline, and aiming for 3,000.

Addendum: we must include a section to flex some of Lyinne's accomplishments. In the spirit of Gilfest, let's use this event's drops.

Once you reach those goals, what are your plans for the game?

I’m internally motivated and not competing with anyone, so I feel that makes my interest more sustainable. My goal is to bond 10 all servants and level all the CEs I want. The latter is a very long list so it will keep me occupied for a while.

Primarily, I'm attracted to the story and characters in the game. As long as they keep delivering on that front, I’ll keep playing. If I’ve reached my goals, I’ll still keep up with new servants and events. It might mean playing less, we’ll see.

Life could also change in many ways, that always takes priority over a game. It’s hard to plan that far in advance.

When it inevitably ends, I’ll close this chapter and look for new hobbies. What a strange and interesting journey, it’s very different from my usual interests.

What advice would you give to players who want to farm more?

Just keep doing it. Really.
I did not farm 3,000 boxes my first “serious” lottery, I farmed 500 and thought that was my limit (though that's also due to lottery differences and the new engine). Part of it is that, as your account develops, you get better comps to use. Conversely, you also get better at other things. I find multitasking extremely helpful, but that takes a lot of practice. Other than podcasts, audiobooks, TV shows, taking a walk is also a nice change of pace.

Set goals, but remember this is a marathon and not a sprint. Going too fast too soon can easily kill your enthusiasm for the game.
A simple gauge is if farming is making you miserable right now - Stop. The flip side of that is if you have goals, or anything that make farming more enjoyable or less of a chore, it’s easy to farm more.

"Collect All" is a huge time-saver when you have a lot of boxes, but it does mean sacrificing existing EXP stock. Personally I find the tradeoff to be worth it, particularly for the September lottery. You can use the gift box filters to avoid touching other items such as Fous.

A tip for rolling boxes while also burning embers (also applicable to rolling FP) is to put every servant not currently needed into the second archive. This provides more space so you don’t have to burn stuff as often.

Do you sometimes wish for more varied content in the game instead of just farming?

I feel as if this game has a lot of unexplored good ideas, but tends to revert back to the usual formulaic events. I wish there were more events with unique mechanics.

From what I’ve seen, Ooku seems like an interesting event, I’m looking forward to it. The Grail Front mini-game in Scathach-Fest looks cool as well.
Events certainly don’t have to be farming-focused for me to find them interesting. I also love Valentines’ because of the CEs and eventually voiced scenes we get from each servant.

Do you find submitting data for your drops to be time consuming?  Do you think you could get more done if you never submitted it?

I have a huge shortcut for submitting data! I use the bond point difference for a particular servant to track the number of runs, and take screenshots for the starting and ending drop info screens, and then just enter them into the drop spreadsheet.

It gives me comfort when I feel RNG is screwing with me, because the data has always told me it evens out in the end. It helps me keep track of things on my end too, which is nice.

Really, the people who have been developing Atlas are way bigger contributors than I am. Following its growth has been incredible, especially the technical stuff that happens in the background. I am just doing a small part.

Which event was the toughest to farm? Which was the easiest?

Excluding the rush to 150, it depends on my real life situation. Last Christmas was difficult because I went overseas halfway through it, which overlapped with the best node. Satellite internet over there was very slow, every roll of the lotto had a loading sign, it was excruciating.

The easiest event to farm was the Holmes event :)

Would you consider yourself the biggest farmer in the game?  Or do you think there are people bigger than you, just unknown/quiet?

Absolutely not. Not even in NA, and certainly not in JP. You can see it on Twitter, there are way more impressive farmers - who reach bond 15 within a week, have thousands of gold mats, or go for 4k boxes in Scathach-lotto. Even in the NA community, there have been way more impressive farmers. In general, no one should believe they're the biggest fish around - if you do, you should probably find a bigger pond.

Also, I find this “title” quite meaningless and silly. I farm for personal enjoyment and satisfaction, I firmly believe everyone should play the game in a way that gives them the most enjoyment.

Are you an international spy for the United Nations?

Just hypothetically, who would a spy for the UN spy on? Who would they spy for, even? “International” is usually  antithetical to “spy”. The concept is interesting...

Author’s note: Lyinne neither confirmed nor denied the allegations presented by the question.

How big of a whale are you?

I see no whale here.

New and veteran players alike may wonder how to clear the numerous Challenge Quests that arrive with the titular event. The least expensive setups are solos, and present a clear baseline for all other clears.
Conversely, they offer a somewhat painless way to approach these quests for players with undeveloped rosters. With that in mind, and with the help of friend supports and some of the showcased videos, I'm sure any player could tackle these challenges face-on.

For an in-depth explanation of the various gimmicks employed in these CQs, please refer to Battle in New York 2020's Fandom Wikia page.
Please note that this sheet doesn't offer farming comps. For those, we recommend checking SaberOfAvalon & xzero's sheet for farming comps instead.
You can also check #resources on the Atlas Academy's Discord server for more links.

Rice Balls Chain-Store #01・Tawara Touta

• Brynhild [NP1]
• Cu Chulainn
• Enkidu [NP1] [Lv100]
• Ereshkigal [NP2] [Lv100]
• Medusa (Lancer) [NP1]
• Minamoto no Raikou (Lancer) [NP3]
• Scathach [NP1]
• Tamamo no Mae (Lancer) [NP2]

Flame Gate・Leonidas

Flame Gate is somewhat challenging to solo due to Saber Shiki and Nero being the only two servants capable of doing it. However, it remains relatively easy to do with any AoE Saber and appropriate supports.

• Artoria/Merlin/Mash - no backline involved
• Low rarity example: Saber Lily DPS with a borrowed Merlin
• Nero Claudius [NP5] [Lv100]
• Ryougi Shiki (Saber) [NP5] [Lv100]

Phantom of the Skyscraper・Okada Izo

Even Marie can solo this, which is very telling of the quest's difficulty.

• Cu Chulainn (Alter) [NP1] [Lv100]
• Illyasviel von Einzbern [NP5] [Lv100]
• Marie Antoinette (Caster) [NP5] [Lv100]
• Merlin [NP1]
• Nero Claudius (Caster) [NP1]
• Waver [NP3] [Lv100]

Come Now! To The Land of Jaguars!・Jaguar Man&co.

When it was released this CQ's difficulty was blown out of proportions. In truth, it is perfectly doable with simple comps.

• Cu Chulainn (Alter) [NP1] [Lv100]
• Ereshkigal [NP5] [Lv100]
• F2P servants with a friend's Merlin
• Katsushika Hokusai [NP5] [Lv100]

Dollar-Cent Leasing Shop・Queen of Sheba

This challenge quests features gimmicks that might cause solos to be a bit troublesome. The encounter isn't overwhelmingly hard and can still be carried by a friend support and a bunch of fodder units:

• Cu Chulainn (Alter) [NP1] [Lv100]
• Cu Chulainn (Alter) with 5 fodder servants
• Heracles [NP5] [Lv100]
• Mecha Eli and f2p units with a friend's Merlin

Sweets Universe・Mysterious Heroine X (Alter)

Unlike the vast majority of CQs, there are no known solo runs of MHXA. The simplest way to do it is through stalling. These are some example runs that might offer ideas on how to deal with MHXA and her army:

• BB, Merlin and Jeanne - generic stall
• Cu Chulainn squad and two taunters
• Low rarity with multiple guts CEs
• Another low rarity example but with a borrowed Merlin

Golden Metropolis Finale

• Amakusa Shirou [NP5] [Lv100]
• Cu Chulainn (Alter) [NP1]
• Darius III
• Eric Bloodaxe
• Heracles [NP1] [Lv90]
• King Hassan [NP3] [Lv100]
• Minamoto no Raikou [NP5] [Lv100]

Article written in collaboration with Kozakura who streams regularly at twitch.tv/kozakura - check him out!

What does it mean to optimize gameplay? For some players, it could be as simple as bringing class advantage to a battle while, for others, the answer could be much more technical in nature. The purpose of this article is to break down the different levels at which one can optimize gameplay - for both the f2p and the whale.

This article will use terms and abbreviations unique to FGO, the definitions of which can be found here:

Fate/Grand Order Glossary

Fate/Grand Order has a considerable amount of terms that are crucial forunderstanding the game’s mechanics. Having a knowledge of these terms anddefinitions can greatly improve the strategies and team compositions thatMasters can utilize in quests. In addition to this, it can also improve under…

Atlas AcademyNet

At the time of this article's publication, the global FGO server is a few weeks away from one of the year's most anticipated events - Gilfest. Many players will be looking to invest time and resources into developing team compositions to farm the lotto nodes as efficiently as possible. This article will use some Gilfest team compositions to illustrate specific points, the hope being that players will be able to improve their own teams by applying the various optimization methods in this article.

Table of Contents

Metrics

So what can the "efficiency" of a team composition be measured by?

Time: The amount of actual time spent clearing a node.

Slots: How many slots can be dedicated to event CEs (for event bonuses) or CEs that provide other bonuses such as the ones from the MP shop (Chaldea Lunchtime, Personal Lesson, and Personal Training, among others).

Effort: How much effort and attention is required on the part of the player in order for the run to go smoothly - how streamlined is the setup?

The value of looking at these metrics is that one can determine when to make tradeoffs between them, depending on their priorities. For example, a player may prefer teams that are more time efficient in exchange for being less slot efficient while others may prefer high effort teams that take a while to clear a node but allow for the use of all 6 slots for non-farming CEs.

With this in mind, we can look at different ways in which we can improve the efficiency of our teams.

As a point of reference, let's list common sources of clicks and time:

Common sources of clicks / time:

The number of clicks required for any given setup is important as it greatly contributes to the time and effort required for clearing a node - both of which are important to minimize when farming for long periods of time, such as in lottos. On that note, we look at different ways players can optimize their setups, depending on the resources available to them.

Optimizations for everyone

• Avoid using the click / time sources above, especially plugsuit, Waver, and Arash. Although these are all staples of team building for lower resource players, it is recommended to move away from them when possible, as they all significantly contribute to the time and effort required to clear a node. Using Arash also means losing out on a slot that could be used for event or MP shop CEs. Even Skadi, and the XSS system by extension, is not the preferred method of farming in many scenarios - this will be elaborated upon.
• If your team has two buffers for one DPS in the frontline, keep the DPS in the middle to make it easier to buff them. For players who use one finger, having the DPS in either the left or right spot in the frontline means they need to stretch their finger twice as far in one direction in order to apply buffs from both buffers to the DPS. This does not apply to players who use two fingers.

• When using Waver, keep him to the right of the servant receiving the 30% NP charge from his first skill. This means your finger travels the least possible distance for the buff to be applied. This applies to not just Waver, but all targeted buffs.

• If a targetable Mystic Code skill is being used on a servant, keep the servant as far right as possible in order to minimize the distance your finger has to travel from the MC to the servant.

• Use servants with faster NP animations (Kiara has a 50% battery - good for farming, but her NP is the longest in the game). This one is dependent on whether or not time efficiency is important to you - this will be elaborated upon later on.
• Try to avoid using targeted buffs if teamwide buffs are an option. Targeted buffs require 2 clicks, as a target needs to be selected after the skill is used. Teamwide buffs instantly apply to the entire party, requiring only 1 click. This also applies to choosing between using MC buffs and teamwide buffs. When possible, use the teamwide buff instead as MC buffs are a minimum of 2 clicks (selecting the MC and selecting the skill).
• Avoid using Mystic Codes or servants that are already max level / bond. For the former, it is worthwhile to adjust your team compositions to work with different MCs, as leveling them boosts the skills that they provide - the exception being the Atlas Mystic Code, which only has its cooldowns reduced. For the latter, a player may choose to use servants that are already max bond if they do not care for bond. But keep in mind that raising bond on other servants gives extra apples and SQ, making it a worthwhile endeavor.
• Sometimes it might be better to not use buffs (save clicks) if a wave can consistently be cleared by facecards. This one is dependent on how much attention the player is willing to put into the run - it takes effort to pick out which facecards would be ideal for finishing off the wave. Players who want every run to be consistent while not paying attention should choose to fully buff in order to avoid the risk of facecards not clearing the wave.
• Use servants who have higher base damage so that they can avoid self buffing. This one depends on if the player prioritizes having a lower effort run over saving bond on servants who might do more damage than others when buffed.
• Avoid making chains - Buster / Quick / Arts / Brave, as the chain indicator takes up time while the extra attack in a brave chain can extend the duration of the turn.

• When pairing an AoE NP with an ST NP for a wave with a high HP mob and other weaker mobs, try to select the AoE NP before the ST NP. This obviously doesn't apply if the AoE NP has an OC effect that needs to be boosted in order to kill the wave. Doing this allows you to avoid 1 click, as the high HP mob does not need to be selected before using the NPs.

• When using plugsuit, keep the servant being swapped out on the right in the frontline, and the servant being swapped in on the left in the backline. This allows you to quickly select the two of them in the plugsuit swap screen with minimum distance traveled by your finger.

To illustrate the effectiveness of some of the aforementioned points, we examine a farming setup that was used in a previous lotto event, Nerofest 2019.

Case Study: Nerofest 2019, Rotation 3 (Finals)

Source: Nerofest 2019 3-Turn Setups Analysis by SaberofAvalon

Nerofest 2019, much like the upcoming Gilfest, was divided into 3 rounds. The final round was known for being easily loopable by Mordred (Rider) in various teams utilizing servants such as Waver, Tamamo-no-Mae, Helena Blavatsky, and Nero Claudius (Bride).

One such setup, shown below, utilized Mordred, Waver, Tamamo, and Helena with the plugsuit NP to fully buff Mordred on turn 1 and have her refund 100% on both waves 1 and 2 in order to "surf" all 3 waves. This setup not only achieved maximum slot efficiency (6 slots), but it was also very streamlined, as Mordred did not require any additional buffs or NP charge after wave 1.

Given all the listed optimization methods, the following variants were the objectively best formations in which to construct this particular setup:

Tamamo's targetable arts buff is her third skill, so it makes sense to have her to the left of Mordred for easy application. As Mordred is also receiving Waver's targetable first skill, she is placed to his left. Because Helena's location does not matter (both her NP battery and rainbow buff are teamwide), we can plugsuit either her or waver in and out from the right side of the formation.

Although such seemingly minor optimizations might not have greatly benefited players who farmed the lotto casually, the increase in efficiency and comfort was greatly felt by heavy farmers who ran such nodes extensively for the duration of the event.

• Nitocris (Accessible with the SR ticket given from certain download campaigns)

Nitocris

The last point requires some explanation, as Nitocris' ability to improve a player's quality of life may not be immediately apparent. Some of her obvious benefits are:

• Despite having relatively low NP damage, she does enough to clear the first two waves of some free quests relatively easily, even when doing neutral damage. This is especially true if Nitocris is at least NP2.
• Can NP immediately with her 100% NP charge (second skill at level 8), meaning she can hold any CE. (Black grail for damage, event CEs for bonus, MP shop CEs, etc.) This makes her extremely slot efficient.
• Can NP twice if she receives NP charge from her CE / other buffers. This also contributes to her slot efficiency. For example, a frontline of Nitocris, support Waver, and a third servant could clear an entire 3 wave node just by themselves. This would leave 4 slots open for event / MP shop CEs (Waver + entire backline). Some setups might even allow for 5 slots if the third servant has a battery of their own.

For this sample 4 slot comp:

Turn 1: Waver uses all skills, first skill goes to Nitocris. Nitocris NPs.

Turn 2: Nitocris uses skill 2 and NPs.

Turn 3: Okita Souji (Alter) uses all skills and then uses her NP. (50% from CE + 20% from Waver on turn 1 + 30% battery from skill 2)

For this sample 5 slot comp:

Turn 1: Waver uses all skills, first skill goes to Nitocris. Nitocris NPs.

Turn 2: Nitocris uses skill 2 and NPs.

Turn 3: Paracelsus uses skill 1, skill 2, then uses his NP. (0% from CE + 20% from Waver on turn 1 + 80% battery from skill 1)

However, many players undervalue Nitocris despite her 100% NP battery due to her low damage and the unreliability of the instant death mechanic. However, Nitocris can be utilized not only for waves of assassin and berserker mobs, but also for many free quests where there are high HP bronze / silver mobs.

Nodes with high HP bronze / silver mobs on wave 3 can actually be reliably killed by pairing Nitocris with either Edison or Void Shiki. Nitocris can be holding any CE if the wave consists of bronze mobs, but needs to be holding Devilish Bodhisattva if there are silver mobs.

If Nitocris' first skill is maxed, her NP will guarantee an instant kill on bronze mobs if she also receives an OC boost from Edison's third skill, Concept Improvement, which increases the chance of her NP applying instant death. This also works with Shiki's first skill, which decreases death resistance for all enemies, guaranteeing that Nitocris' NP will apply instant death. However, Shiki's Mystic Eyes of Death Perception does need to be at least level 5 if being used on silver mobs, unlike Edison's Concept Improvement.

The benefit of using Shiki over Edison here is that Edison's skill is targeted, requiring 2 clicks, while Shiki's skill applies to all mobs, requiring just 1 click.

Nitocris teams that rely on instant death for the third wave are actually quite practical, as there are many free quests that satisfy the conditions of the first two waves being low HP with the third wave having a high HP mob. The first two waves need to be low HP in order for either Shiki or Edison to clear one of them using just their NPs. Any AoE servant can be brought in to clear the other wave, although it is preferable that they have a team buff of some kind in order to boost the relatively low NP damages of Edison and Shiki (assuming NP1 each).  This issue can also be rectified through the use of MC skills.

The following is a list of free quests that players may find themselves farming for materials. These FQs can be cleared using the aforementioned Nitocris teams. This list is not extensive. There are other FQs which can be cleared using Nitocris in different setups.

• Mystic Gunpowder - Yaga Smolensk
• Mystic Gunpower + Shell of Reminiscence - Burned Village
• Eternal Ice - Yaga Moscow
• Eternal Ice + Shell of Reminiscence - Crushed Village
• Stake of Wailing Night - Gallows Hill

The best part of these instant death Nitocris teams is that Nitocris herself only has to be NP1, as her actual NP damage is not relevant when farming these nodes.

The takeaway here is that Nitocris is an extremely useful servant for both f2ps and whales alike, as she can be acquired either through an SR ticket or through spooks (she is in the permanent pool of servants). And if one already has a copy of Nitocris, Edison is actually an extremely valuable servant to have and make use of.

The following sections are broken down by superscope count, as having one or more superscopes greatly increases the number of team compositions available to a player. However, even possessing one or more regular kaleidoscopes is a huge boon for flexibility in team building. The following sections are just general guidelines and players should not feel confined to any individual category - all optimizations can be applied to any player.

It is important to keep in mind that as efficiency priorities will vary between players, so will the trade-offs (time / slots / effort) they are willing to make when team building.

Low resource (no Superscope)

• It will probably be difficult to avoid using Arash / support Waver / plugsuit to some degree.
• Although it may require some creativity, even f2p players can easily minturn nodes through the use of welfare servants, battery CEs, and low rarity servants. Although Kaleidoscope is the premier battery CE, lower rarity CEs such as Imaginary Element (in the permanent pool of CEs) and Dragon's Meridian (available in the FP gacha) also work as functional alternatives.
• In particular, full attack event CEs that give 50% NP charge are extremely valuable. The most notable ones (as of this writing) are as follows:

Note: CEs whose events have already been rerun are not attainable as of this writing.

• Focus on raising low rarity servants with batteries for more streamlined farming teams. They are as follows:

These servants can easily be utilized in teams with supports such as Waver and Skadi that offer teamwide NP charge. Their batteries, in combination with the free event CEs listed above, make it extremely easy for them to utilize their NPs in both farming and high difficulty encounters. Paracelsus and Avicebron in particular can be easily integrated into 5 slot comps due to their having 80% batteries that can be topped off with the 20% from Waver's teamwide second and third skills.

For further reading: Low rarity servant priority guide by Aria

• In addition to the aforementioned low rarity servants with batteries, there are a number of notable welfare servants who can be easily utilized in various team compositions due to their having NP batteries of their own. They are as follows:

Note: Most welfares whose events have been rerun are not attainable as of the time of this writing. However, main interludes have allowed for the return of some events that have already had reruns, including their welfares. As of this writing, Christmas 2019 and CCC have received main interludes.

• By utilizing low rarity servants and welfares with batteries in conjunction with friend supports, usually Waver, it becomes possible for low resource players to minturn the majority of free quests in the game that are farmed for materials, as can be seen in the following playlist:

Hong's f2p farming setups for free quests and dailies

Paracelsus (and Sieg) Go to Gilfest

Of the welfare and low rarity servants listed, Sieg and Paracelsus are of particular interest as many players will be utilizing them in conjunction with double Waver for the upcoming Gilfest lotto. Sieg is capable of NP looping with his NP gen buff, arts buff, and battery while Paracelsus can clear an entire wave on his own with his 80% battery and enable other loopers (Sieg in this case) with his teamwide arts buff and targetable NP gen buff.

The benefit of utilizing this team is that it is slot efficient (5 slots) and relatively accessible for lower resource players - the main requirement is that the player has their own Waver. It also allows players to get away with preparing only one team comp, as this setup can be used for all 3 Gilfest rotations. The downside is that it requires a lot of time and effort due to the presence of  Waver, plugsuit, and minor facecard RNG.

Waver (4 clicks) * 2 + Paracelsus (4 clicks) + Sieg (3 clicks) + plugsuit swap (5 clicks) + plugsuit atk buff (2 clicks) + 3 wave node (12 clicks) = 34 clicks in addition to having some facecard RNG and the plugsuit swap delay.

For more complete calculations: Gilfest 2020: Sieg - Para - Skadi / Waver - Waver Comp Calculations by Ratentaisou

While there are other teams that can be used for Gilfest, it is almost impossible to avoid using plugsuit swap if one is limited by resources. It is possible to avoid using it and dramatically cut down on clicks required, but at the cost of adding extreme RNG.

【FGO】无换人无宝石翁5加成3T速刷闪闪祭正赛材料图，易学！平民也可以做到！！_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

Hi~%E5%90%84%E4%BD%8D%E5%B0%8F%E4%BC%99%E4%BC%B4%E4%BB%AC%E5%A4%A7%E5%AE%B6%E5%A5%BD~~%0A%E6%9C%AC%E6%9C%9F%E8%A7%86%E9%A2%91%E8%B7%9F%E5%A4%A7%E5%AE%B6%E5%88%86%E4%BA%AB%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%AA%E7%AE%80%E5%8D%95%E6%98%93%E5%AD%A6%E7%9A%84%E9%80%9F%E5%88%B7%E9%97%AA%E9%97%AA%E7%A5%AD%E6%9D%90%E6%96%99%E6%…

夏のMaster

In this sample team, wave 1 is cleared using entirely facecards and wave 3 requires facecards to fully clear. Although this setup might be less clicks and effort than the plugsuit double Waver team, the higher RNG can lead to the run taking more than 3 turns - not something we want to be doing.

But what if one doesn't own Waver? There are indeed compositions that consist entirely of low rarity servants and support Waver/Skadi but the trade-off is that they are high effort and slot inefficient.

This sample team requires only low rarity servants from the player's own roster but at the cost of being only 4 slots and requiring precise skill timings, being 32 clicks, and still having facecard RNG on wave 2.

The purpose of listing these different setups is to illustrate how, although content can be cleared by f2p and low resource players, having any additional resources at all (such as Waver) can make it easier to build teams that take less time, free up more slots, and require less effort.

1 Superscope

• Superscope makes it easy to work around servants with 50% NP batteries for 4 or 5 slot comps when paired with other battery servants equipped with NP charge CEs and Waver / Skadi.

Sample team (4 slot):

Turn by turn breakdown:

Sample team (5 slot):

You get the idea.

The following is a list of servants with 50% or higher batteries that can easily double NP with superscope:

• Having a superscope is a requirement for most practical XSS teams. While many players view XSS as the ultimate farming setup due to its slot efficiency (5 slots) and versatility (many XSS loopers are class agnostic), it is actually preferable that XSS be avoided whenever possible.

XSS, or why Skadi is high maintenance

While many players with superscopes and the necessary components to run XSS may feel inclined to use it at every given opportunity the truth is that, in many scenarios, XSS is not the most efficient setup in terms of both time and effort.

The first thing to note is that XSS is not low effort. Using Skadi in an XSS setup not only requires more clicks than Waver (5 to 4), but is also more prone to misclicks due to two of her skills being targeted. As XSS loopers are dependent on the quick buffs and NP charge from Skadi, the penalty for misclicking is often a completely botched run, which most players rectify through the use of a command seal.

In order to get a better idea of the effort required to run XSS, we list the following XSS compatible loopers and the clicks required for any necessary self buffs or skills.

For a full list of XSS calculations: XSS Superscope Plugless Farming Handbook by Zwei

The XSS setup with the least possible number of clicks uses Marie, no defense downs from Skadi, and no MC skills. This comes out to a total of 21 clicks (12 (4 / turn) +  1 (teamwide buff) + 8 (4/ Skadi)). Using Skadi's defense downs brings the total up to 23 clicks.

Lancelot, despite being a popular choice for XSS, actually requires some of the most clicks. A typical XSS run with Lancelot requires (12 (4 / turn) + 1 (skill 3) + 10 (5 / Skadi) + 6 (2004 MC)) = 27 clicks. This is not an insignificant number of clicks by any means. Not only is 27 clicks high effort, it also means the run itself takes longer due to the number of skills that need to be used.

That being said, it is possible to maintain slot efficiency while not suffering from the high click counts and effort required for XSS teams.

Skadi isn't invited to New York

For Gilfest specifically, it is entirely possible to XSS all 3 rotations with 5 slots of bonus and some RNG. Dantes is a standout in this regard, as he has flexibility in his choice of MC at higher NP levels (NP3+ especially). However, a consistent Dantes team for Gilfest will require (12 (4 / turn) + 2 (skills 1 and 2) + 10 (5 / Skadi) + 2-3 (depending on what MC is being used)) =  26-27 clicks and 4-5 targeted buffs being used.

However, due to XSS being neither low effort nor time efficient for the reasons listed above, it would be ideal if we could find team compositions that have at least the same slot efficiency while either taking less time and effort or having more leeway for errors.

The following are examples of team compositions that meet this criteria:

Rotation 1 (5 slots, 23 clicks, 2 targeted buffs) :

Mystic Code: A Fragment of 2004

Mordred can also replace Artoria here, albeit at the cost of lower damage.

Rotation 2 (5 slots, 26 clicks, 4 targeted buffs):

Mystic Code: Tropical Summer

Although this setup has a similar number of clicks and targeted buffs as an XSS setup, it is more forgiving because one Waver's skill 2 can be used to fill any missing NP gauge if the player misclicks or gets bad RNG.

Rotation 3 (6 slots, 29 clicks, 4 targeted buffs):

Mystic Code: Tropical Summer

Unlike the previous two sample teams, this rotation 3 team actually requires more clicks than an XSS setup and has moderate wave 1 / wave 3 RNG due to it requiring Jarcher to build up 20% NP charge through arts chaining / facecards on wave 1 and requiring Jarcher facecards on wave 3. However, this is in return for being more slot efficient while still having only 4 targeted buffs.

However, if one was to value consistency over potentially using less effort, it would be simple to use the plugsuit MC and include another buffer / source of battery such as Waver in order to entirely remove the RNG in waves 1 and 3.

2+ Superscopes

The obvious setup that comes to mind when thinking of multiple superscopes is a triple superscope setup that can clear a 3 wave node in around 12 clicks. Although this method of clearing nodes is the most time efficient by far (3 waves, 3 NPs, 12 clicks barring any additional buffs), it is one of the worst setups for slot efficiency as there are only 3 slots left over for other CEs. For players who don't care for servant bond, master level, and MC level, this setup works fine as it requires minimal effort for a minturn clear. But as most players do care about the aforementioned things to some extent, the triple superscope setup can be considered impractical, a "lazy man's team" in a sense.

• Double superscope setups can run more flexible variants of the 4 slot comps described in the 1 superscope section due to the third servant not requiring any charge of their own. This third servant can improve the consistency of a farming setup if they can provide buffs to the wave 3 clearer while also being able to clear a wave on their own.
• Another benefit of this setup is that the 2k attack from a superscope greatly boosts the damage of lower rarity servants by a not insignificant amount. For example, Caster Gilles' NP damage with class advantage goes from an average of 23,330 to 29,540 with superscope equipped and no additional buffs. This is a 26.6%~ increase in damage from the CE attack stat alone. This, combined with the relatively fast NP animations of many lower rarity servants, makes Gilles and other low rarity servants more enticing options when constructing farming setups.
• Because the third servant in the frontline does not require any additional charge, a player with double superscopes should consider bringing Skadi instead of Waver to nodes where the third servant does not require any attack buffs to clear their wave. This is because Skadi can provide your double NPing servant with 50% battery in 2 clicks, compared to Waver's 4 clicks. In addition to this, the servant that is using their NP twice does not necessarily need to be a quick servant, as Skadi can provide a 30% defense down on enemies in the last wave, which is functionally the same as Waver's 30% attack buff. The takeaway is that if Waver provided enough buffs for your wave 3 servant to consistently clear the wave, it is better to take Skadi as she can provide the same buff, but with 1 less click (assuming her quick buff is not used).  

Sample teams (4 slot):

An interesting variant of this setup uses Ereshkigal:

Whereas the previous setups had the servant NPing twice do so on waves 2 and 3, the Ereshkigal setup has her NP on waves 1 and 2 to provide a 40% attack buff for the third servant on wave 3. This is because any servants who receive the teamwide buff from her third skill have their attack increased for 3 turns every time Ereshkigal uses her NP while the buff is active.

Final Thoughts

Although most players might consider farming in FGO to be a fairly straightforward affair, there is a surprising amount of optimization that can be done to improve the efficiency of any given setup. However, it is important to take a holistic approach to optimization and the game in general.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Time efficiency should not be a major consideration if the player is using only natural AP / limited in their refills. If this is the case, there is nothing lost by using servants who have longer NP animations, as using servants with shorter animations would not somehow allow the player to farm more. This also applies to how much effort a setup requires, as high effort setups are not an issue for players who are not planning on using them extensively for long periods of time.
• Slot efficiency is not super important outside of events, where event CEs can provide bonuses to event currency and drops. Although it is nice to free up an extra slot for a bond or mystic code CE, this should not be a priority for players who are low on resources and need to use higher effort setups with lower slot efficiency.
• While looping is the "trendy" thing to do with XSS in FGO Global and Caster Artoria in FGO JP, one must consider the actual trade-offs that are being made when utilizing these setups - Castoria setups have a minimum of 22 clicks, not low effort by any means.
• One must consider context when farming. For example, if a player is farming while doing other things such as watching TV or reading a book, it may be better for them to go with less slot efficient but more streamlined setups in order to reduce the risk of botching a run due to misclicked skills while not paying attention. There are always trade-offs that have to be made.

The hope is that anyone who reads this article is able to apply the given optimizations in order to improve their gameplay and have a better experience playing FGO.

All videos and images included belong to their respective publishers.

All images, unless otherwise noted, are official Fate Grand Order game assets.

Fate/Grand Order has a considerable amount of terms that are crucial for understanding the game’s mechanics. Having a knowledge of these terms and definitions can greatly improve the strategies and team compositions that Masters can utilize in quests.

In addition to this, it can also improve understanding of how to use The Wizard, a useful resource provided by Atlas Academy Discord Server which allows users to calculate the damage that a Servant can deal to enemies given certain buffs. The objective of this resource is to provide a quick and precise explanation of these terms.

This glossary will be divided in three categories: the first one will be a summary of abbreviations used in the game, the second one will be for gameplay related terminology, and the last will be focused on terms used in the FGO community.

For faster navigation, it is recommended to use Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (MacOS).

PART ONE - ABBREVIATIONS

1. 2030 - A Fragment of 2030
2. AoE - Area of Effect
3. AP - Action Points
4. BCE - Bond CE
5. BG - Black Grail
6. BL - Bella Lisa
7. CC - Command Code
8. CD - Cooldown
9. CE - Craft Essence
10. CLT/LT - Chaldea Lunchtime
11. CQ - Challenge Quest
12. CS - Command Spell
13. DPS - Damage Per Second
14. ESM - Enemy Server Mod
15. EXP - Experience
16. FC - Formal Craft or Facecard
17. FL - Friend List
18. FP - Friend Point
19. FQ - Free Quest
20. IK - Instant Kill
21. IP - Imperial Privilege
22. MA - Mage's Association Uniform
23. MC - Mystic Code
24. ML - Mona Lisa
25. MLB - Max Limit Break
26. MP - Mana Prism
27. NP - Noble Phantasm
28. NPC - Non-Player Character
29. OC - Overcharge
30. PL - Personal Lesson
31. PM - Power Mod
32. PP - Pure Prism
33. PT - Personal Training
34. QP - Quantum Piece
35. RNG - Random Number Generator
36. RP - Rare Prism
37. SE - Super Effective Mod
38. SL - Support List
39. SQ - Saint Quartz
40. ST - Single Target
41. STR - Strengthening
42. TA - Turn Attack
43. TT - Chaldea Teatime
44. USO - Unregistered Spirit Origin

PART TWO - GAMEPLAY TERMINOLOGY

1. Active Buffs

Active Buffs are effects placed on a Servant that enhance their stats (offensive or defensive). However, they require the activation of a skill or Noble Phantasm in order to be applied.

2. Action Point

Action Point refers to the stamina that allows Masters to start quests. 1 AP is restored every 5 minutes, and the maximum capacity will depend on the Master's Level. However, AP can be refilled using Bronze, Silver or Gold Fruits and Saint Quartz.

3. Alignment

Alignment is one the categories (along with classes, traits and attributes) in which Servants can be grouped together with others. A Servant's alignment is based on their personality or character (this doesn't always apply, so it's best to manually check each Servant's alignment).

Usually, alignments consist of two parts:

1. One of Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic
2. One of Good, Neutral, Evil

Almost every Servant has one alignment from each of the parts listed above, making a total of nine possible combinations. However, there are special alignments given to certain Servants: Insane (Berserker Servants who have lost their sanity), Bride (Nero Claudius Saber), or Summer (Summer Event Servants). Arjuna Alter is a special case because he is Lawful, Good, and Evil.

There are some Servants whose skills only affect allies who are of a specific alignment (such as James Moriarty's 3rd skill "Evil Charisma A") or Noble Phantasms that deal more damage to enemies that have a certain alignment (such as Sei Shonagon's NP "Emotional Engine - Full Drive"). There are also skills/effects that can grant an alignment to servants (such as James Moriarty's 2nd skill "End of the Spider's Web A+++").

4. Append Skill

Append skills are introduced with 6th Anniversary and are another way to enhance your servants. A1/A2/A3 refer to a servant's first/second/third append skills. Append skills follow these patterns:

A1: Cardtype mod for extra attacks
A2: Starting NP gauge
A3: Attack mod vs specific class for non-berserkers OR crit chance reduction vs specific class for berserkers

5. Attack Mod

Attack Mod or atkmod is the value by which the current attack value of the Servant is multiplied. Every Servant has their own unique attack value, which can be found in the Atlas Academy Database.

6. Attribute

Attribute is a mechanic that complements classes, traits and alignments. Currently, there are five attributes, with some having an advantage or disadvantage against others.

All Servants and enemies have an attribute, the criteria for attributes is as follows (this doesn't always apply, so it's better to check a Servant's attributes individually):

1. Sky or Heaven: beings or entities possessing divinity.
2. Earth: characters originated from stories, myths and legends.
3. Man: historical figures who accomplished great feats as humans.
4. Star: people who changed human history with their deeds.
5. Beast: refers to the seven Beasts of Calamity existing in FGO lore.

7. Beast's Footprint

Beast's Footprint is an item that allows Masters to improve the base attack value of a Servant's card (except NP Cards). Each Servant card can be upgraded individually using this item.

8. Bronze Sapling

Introduced with the JP 25M DL Campaign, 1 Bronze Sapling and 40 AP can be converted to 1 Bronze (Blue) Apple. The apple restores 40 AP.

9. Buff

A buff is an effect applied to a Servant that improves their status, either defensively or offensively.

10. Cavalry class

A Cavalry class is a Rider, Caster, Assassin, or Berserker-type unit.

11. Card Mod

Card Mod or cardmod is the value that increases the default damage of a card type. Buster, Arts and Quick cards have differing base damages depending on the position in which they are placed. Cardmod multiplies these values.

It is important to keep in mind that NP cards are not affected by this chart, they will always use the same values of a first position regardless where you place them.

12. Chain

Chain is a gameplay mechanic that relies on card selection (normal and NP) during a turn. There are many types of chains, each with their own particular bonuses:

1. Buster Chain: occurs when a Master picks three Buster cards in the same turn; this chain provides 20% flat bonus attack up to all participating cards, except NP cards.
2. Arts Chain: occurs when a Master picks three Arts cards in the same turn, this chain provides 20% NP charge to all Servants that are participating in the turn.
3. Quick Chain: occurs when a Master picks three Quick cards in the same turn, this chain provides 10 extra Critical Stars (20 on JP).

In these 3 cases, it doesn't matter if the cards are from the same Servant or not, the only requirement is that they have to be of the same card type.

Brave Chain: occurs when a Master picks three Cards of the same Servant in the same turn, allowing the Servant in question to perform a 4th attack called Extra Attack.

Mighty Chain: JP Only, occurs when a Master picks a Quick, an Arts, and a Buster card in the same turn in any order. All three cards will receive all three first card bonuses: +20% crit chance per card, +20% stargen, +100% NP gen, and +50% damage.

A Brave Chain can be potentially combined with any of the other chains, but this will depend on the individual Servant's card deck. For example, Heracles can use a BBB chain to enable a buster brave chain.

13. Challenge Quest

Challenge Quest is a special quest with a higher degree of difficulty than Free Quests, usually appearing in events and special campaigns. These quests are worthwhile for Masters to clear because its completion, in most cases, will provide a Crystallized Lore as a reward, an item used to raise a Servant’s skill level from 9 to 10.

14. Command Code

Command Code is an item that can be engraved to a Servant's card (except NP cards), providing special effects to the card in question when it's used in battle. These special effects will depend on each Command Code. To see the list of all CCs available in game, please refer to the Atlas Academy Database.

15. Command Spell

Command Spell is an absolute command that a Master can use during a battle. Masters can have a maximum of 3 Command Spells and they replenish at 00:00 JST (JP) and at 00:00 UTC (NA) at a rate of 1 per day.

One Command Spell is required to do one the following actions: fully restore one Servant’s HP or increase one Servant's NP gauge by 100%.

Three Command Spells are required to fully revive the entire team with full HP and NP gauges if everyone has been incapacitated. CE effects such as starbombs or Herc's Bond CE do not get refreshed.

16. Critical Damage

Critical Damage is a buff applied to normal cards (except NP cards) that allows a Servant to do more damage than usual. The default damage value of a Critical Attack is two times the damage of a normal attack. However, this value can be increased through active skills (such as Zhuge Liang's 1st skill "Discerning Eye A") or passive buffs.

  16.1 Critical Star

Critical Star is an element present in battles, they drop when a Servant attacks an enemy and are gathered at the end of the turn. The number of critical stars dropped depends on the card type and the Critical Star generation each Servant possess. The value of a Servant's Critical Star generation rate can be modified with a skill (such as Lanling Wang's 3rd skill "Demonic Face EX") or a Craft Essence.

The purpose of Critical Stars in the game is to determine the probability of a card to deal Critical Damage, with 10 stars required for a card to increase that probability to 100%.

  16.2 Critical Star Distribution

As mentioned previously, the collected Critical Stars are gathered and distributed at the end of the turn, in order to be used in the next one. The number of Critical Stars given to each card depends on three variables: the class star absorption default value, the luck stat of the Servant and star gathering skills (such as Xiang Yu's 1st Skill "Future Prediction A++").

According to this chart, Rider class Servants have the highest Critical Star absorption while classes such as Berserker or Avenger have less than average. So, if a party is composed of Rider and Avenger Servants, most of the critical stars will be absorbed by the Rider Servant’s cards.

17.  Enemy Server Mod

Enemy Server Mod or esm is a value that determines the amount of NP gain a Servant will get when attacking an enemy, with these values changing based on enemy class.

According to this chart, when a Servant attacks a Caster class enemy, the attacker will get 20% extra NP gain than the default value (1.0). On the other hand, when the same Servant attacks a Berserker class enemy, the attacker will have a penalty of -20% NP gain from the default rate.

There are also some enemy types that provide a larger than average amount of NP gain when attacking them. An example are undead enemies providing 1.2x. However, this is not consistent: there are undead enemies that have the regular 1.0 multiplier.

18. Extra class

An Extra class is a non-Knight or Cavalry class: Ruler, Avenger, Moon Cancer, Shielder, Alter Ego, Foreigner, and Pretender.

19. First Card Bonus

The first command card in a turn grants all other normal attacks a bonus effect. Noble Phantasms can grant first card bonus but are unaffected by it.

Quick: +20% star generation rate. On JP, it also provides all cards in the turn +20% critrate.
Arts: +100% NP generation rate.
Buster: +50% damage.

20.  Flat Damage

Flat Damage is a raw value that is added to the total damage dealt by a Servant. The difference between Flat Damage and other types of buffs is that Flat Damage is never multiplied by other values, it only gets added to the damage formula.

Example: Zhuge Liang’s 3rd skill (at Lvl. 10) provides 500 flat damage to the party.

21. Free Quest

Free Quest is a term that refers to all missions that don't include story cutscenes.

22. Friend Point

Friend Point is a currency in Fate/Grand Order used to roll in the Friend Point Summon gacha banner. They are obtained using Support Servants in quests and also through special events and campaigns. 10 FPs are earned when choosing a Servant from someone who is not in the Friend List, 25 FPs are gained from friends' Servants, while 200 FPs are gained from using NPC Servants during Main Quests. There are also Craft Essences that can modify the amount of FP you get: Beginning of the Journey increases your FP gain by 75 if you finish a node with it in the party.

23. Holy Grail Casting

Holy Grail Casting is introduced after completion of Tunguska Epilogue. 2000 servant coins may be exchanged to make 1 Holy Grail. This can be done twice a month.

24. Interlude

Interlude is a special side quest featuring specific Servants. The completion of an interlude rewards Masters with Saint Quartz and sometimes with a Skill or NP upgrade for the featured Servant.

25. Instant Kill

Instant Kill (IK) is a mechanic that allows a Servant or enemy to instantly kill an opponent unit with an attack or Noble Phantasm, regardless of the amount of HP remaining.

There are some Noble Phantasms (such as First Hassan's NP "Azrael") that have a high chance of applying the instant kill effect. However, the chance of this happening depends on two variables:

1. Death Resistance Rate: every Servant and enemy has a unique default death resistance rate. However, this can be reduced through the use of active skills (such as Ryougi Shiki's 1st skill "Mystic Eyes of Death Perception A"), NP effects or Craft Essences.
2. Death Success Rate: that means, the probability of the attack or Noble Phantasm instantly killing the enemy. This value can be increased through the use of active skills (such as Nitocris' 1st skill "Egyptian Magecraft A"), specific NP effects or Craft Essences.

Although both variables are similar, they differ in the way that the former is a factor that applies to enemy units while the latter applies to the unit that is attacking.

26. Knight class

A Knight class is a Saber, Archer, or Lancer-type unit.

27. Main Quest

Main Quest is a term that refers to all missions that include a story component, whether it be of the main FGO story or an event story.

28. Mana Prism

Mana Prism is a currency in Fate/Grand Order used to buy items in Da Vinci's Shop. They are obtained in daily missions, events, special campaigns and when a Master sells any 3* or higher rarity card (lower in Command Code's case) in Da Vinci's Shop.

29. Max Limit Break

Max Limit Break is a mechanic that applies to Craft Essences. Limit breaking happens when a CE is merged with another copy of the same CE to increase its maximum level cap. Masters can limit break up a CE up to four times, upon which a CE becomes Max Limit Broken and its effects are improved.

30. Memorial Quest

Memorial Quest is a special quest that appears in special events and features a Boss Battle from story chapters. In order to do a memorial quest, you must have beaten that corresponding story chapter.

31. NP Gain

NP Gain or NP Generation is a value that changes the amount of NP charge a Servant gains while attacking. This value can be modified by active skills and also depends on the class of the enemy being attacked.

For more information, please refer to Enemy Server Mod.

32. NP Mod

NP Mod or npmod (referred in-game as "NP damage up") is a buff that increases the damage of NP cards. This type of buff is provided by active skills and/or Craft Essences. This value doesn't affect normal cards.

33. Overcharge

Overcharge or OC is a mechanic that applies to Noble Phantasms and provides extra buffs or damage, depending on each Servant. NPs will be OC level 1 by default.

The OC level can be increased in two ways:

1. Servants gain one OC level per 100% NP gauge (with this method, it is possible to reach OC level 3 due to NP5 Servants having a max NP gauge of 300%).
2. If multiple NPs are used in the same turn, subsequent NPs after the first will gain one OC level each (giving a maximum of 2 OC levels on the 3rd NP).

The max OC level Servants can reach is 5. This can be achieved by placing a 300% charged NP card in 3rd position, preceded by another two NP cards. There are also certain Servant's skills (such as Thomas Edison’s 3rd skill "Concept Improvement A+") and Craft Essences (such as Devilish Bodhisattva) that can boost NP OC level.

It is important to highlight that OC level is a completely different mechanic from NP level. However, NP level can determine the max OC level a Servant can get, as only NP level 5 Servants can fill their NP gauge to 300%.

34.  Overkill

Overkill is a mechanic that allows a Servant's card (normal or NP) to acquire 50% extra NP gain every time the attacker hits an enemy after its HP has already been reduced to zero. Overkill also increases the drop rate of Critical Stars which can be used in the next turn. This mechanic is one of the fundamentals of NP Looping.

For more information, please refer to NP Loop.

35. Overgauge

Overgauge is a mechanic that follows the same principle as the Overkill effect, the main difference being that Overgauge occurs when an enemy with multiple HP bars takes damage on the same turn after one of its HP bars has already been depleted.

36.  Passive Buffs

Passive Buffs are effects given to Servants that improves or, in rare cases, degrades their stats (offensive or defensive). Passives don’t require the activation of a skill or Noble Phantasm in order to be applied. Each Servant has their own passive buffs which can be seen in the Atlas Academy Database.

37. Pity System

FGO's pity system activates on the 330th roll on a singular banner. You are guaranteed the banner servant by the 330th roll. You can only receive pity once per specific banner and the pity goes away if you pull the rate up SSR servant before the 330th roll.

38.  Power Mod

Power Mod or PM is a special type of buff that increases the damage of both NP and normal cards. These are usually found (but not restricted to) event Craft Essences. In the case of event CEs, the Power Mod effect will only apply during the course of the event and only in quests from that event.

Power Mod can also be found in certain Servant's skills (such as Minamoto no Raikou's 3rd skill "Mystic Slayer A") or Noble Phantasms (such as Sei Shonagon's NP "Emotional Engine - Full Drive"). In both cases, Power Mod usually affects enemies of specific traits, attributes or alignments.

For more information, please refer to Trait, Attribute and Alignment.

39. Pure Prism

A limited resource obtained through story progression. It can be used to exchange for mats in the Pure Prism shop.

40. Push!

The Push functionality shows your favorite servant to your friends.

41. Servant Coin

Servant Coins are introduced during 6th anniversary and are used in a few different ways:

-They are used to unlock a servant's append skills (see Append Skill).
-They are used to grail past level 100.
-They can be converted to Holy Grails.

42. Spiritvein Stone / Leyline Stone

Spiritvein Stones function equivalently to a 3 Command Seal revive. They can only be used on Main Story Quests and have an expiration date. They are primarily given out during campaigns.

43.  Super Effective Mod

Super Effective Mod or SE is a special value that modifies the damage of Noble Phantasms, meaning that this buff can't affect normal cards. Super Effective Mod usually applies to enemies with specific traits or alignments (that will depend of each Servant's description). To see which Servants have a Super Effective Mod in their NPs, refer to the Atlas Academy Database.

Example: Yu Miaoyi's (Lancer) Noble Phantasm "Anti-fling Rondo - Summer Demon's Spear of Certain Death" provides 150% Extra Damage to all male enemies.

The main difference between Power Mod and Super Effective Mod is that the former can affect both normal cards and NP cards and has a turn duration, while the latter only affects NP Cards and don't apply outside of them.

Example: Siegfried is the perfect case to illustrate the difference between these two terms. His powermod against dragons on his 3rd Skill "Dragon Slayer A++" has a duration of 3 turns and affects both normal and NP cards, but his Super Effective Mod against dragons only applies to his Noble Phantasm "Balmung" and won't apply outside of it. As they are different kinds of buffs, they stack multiplicatively to deal more damage.

44. Quantum Piece

Quantum Piece or QP is the base free currency of Fate/Grand Order, it is used to level up Servants, Craft Essences and Servant's skills. They can be earned after completing quests, burning cards in Da Vinci's shop, or as drops from most enemies in the game.

45. Rare Prism

Rare Prism is a unique currency in Fate/Grand Order used to buy special items in Da Vinci's Shop. They are obtained when a Master sells any 4* or 5* Servant, excluding welfares.

However, it also can be obtained in some particular cases, such as:

1. Masters get 1 Rare Prism if an Event has a Costume Dress that has been previously acquired.
2. Copies 6 to 10 of welfare Servants acquired during or after the 2020 Christmas Event Rerun (NA) will each give 1 Rare Prism upon acquisition, automatically arriving to the present box, burning is not required. Any welfare Servant acquired prior to that rerun will not give RP.
3. Some limited time Master's Missions will reward with a Rare Prism (available only in special campaigns).

46. Saint Quartz

Saint Quartz is the premium currency of Fate/Grand Order, it is used for gacha rolls and can be used to refill the AP bar.

47. Strengthening Quest

Strengthening Quest (also called Rank Ups) is a special mission that give a Skill or NP upgrade to a specific Servant. The difference between Strengthenings and Interludes is that the former doesn't include a side-story while the latter is not guaranteed to give an upgrade.

48. Support List

Support List is a list of Servants that are available for other people to use in quests.

49.  Trait

Trait is one of the categories (along with classes, attributes and alignments) in which Servants can be organized based on their characteristics. Traits are important in FGO gameplay because Servants have skills that can do extra damage if the enemy has a certain trait.

Example: Siegfried's 3rd Skill "Dragon Slayer A++" provides the following buffs.

1. Increases own damage against Dragon enemies for 3 turns.
2. Increases own defense against Dragon enemies by 30% for 3 turns.
3. Increases own Buster performance for 1 turn

This means that when Siegfried activates his skill, he will deal extra damage to enemies that have the Dragon trait (Servants such as Artoria Saber, Sieg or enemies such as Wyverns have this trait).

There are also special active buffs that can only be applied if the ally Servant has a specific trait.

Example: Jason's 3rd Skill "Conquering the Distant Sea Routes with Friends B++" provides the following buffs:

1. Charges the NP of Argo-Related allies except himself.
2. Increases the critical damage of Argo-Related allies except himself for 3 turns.
3. Increases the critical star generation rate of Argo-Related allies except himself for 3 turns.

This means that Jason's skill can only be applied to Servants that have the "Argo-Related" trait (Dioscuri, Atalante, Chiron, Paris, Caenis, Medea, Medea Lily, Circe, Asclepius, Heracles and Atalante Alter).

50. Unregistered Spirit Origin

Unregistered Spirit Origin is one of the rarest items in the game, it can be obtained when a Master summons the 6th copy of a 5* Servant, arriving directly to the present box, no burning required. From that point, further copies will each give 1 USO upon acquisition.

10 USOs are required to perform a Special Summon in Da Vinci's shop.

PART THREE - COMMUNITY TERMINOLOGY

1. 3/3/x

3/3/x refers to a node where wave 1 has 3 enemies, wave 2 has 3 enemies, and wave 3 has some amount of enemies. This type of format can be extended to other node setups, such as 1/2/1 and 5/1/2.

2. 5S/6S/5CE/6CE

5S and 6S refers to the number of bonus CEs used in a composition. This is most commonly used during lottery events, where we refer to the number of bonus drop CEs in the team. For example, a 6S composition during the Battle in New York 2021 event has 6 Scenic Beauty CEs in the party.

3. 90+

90+ nodes are introduced during the Fate/Requiem Board Game Apocalypse and refers to the recommended level of the node. 90+ nodes oftentimes feature unorthodox node setups: the aforementioned Requiem 90+ node is a 3/1/1 node.

4. 2004

2004 is a term used to make reference to A Fragment of 2004 Mystic Code.

5. 2145 / 2150

2145 is a term used to describe Servants that have the following characteristics: 2000 Fou points, Servant Lvl. 100, Skill Lvl. 10 / 10 / 10, Bond Lvl. 10 and NP Lvl. 5.

2150 applies the same principle, but with Bond Lvl. 15 instead of 10.

6. Apple / Rapple

Apple is the common term used to make reference to Copper, Bronze (Blue), Silver, or Gold Fruits, which are used to refill AP in the game. Rapple (Rainbow Apple) refers to Saint Quartz used to refill the AP bar.

7. Battery

Battery is a term that makes reference to all skills that provide NP charge to a Servant, either via self-charge or a targetable skill. For example, Arash's S3 is a 30% NP battery.

8. Blue Apple

Officially called Bronze Apples, these are created when you spend 40 AP and 1 Bronze Sapling to make 1 Bronze/Blue Apple. The corresponding apple restores 40 AP, essentially "storing" the AP.

9. Bond Grail

Bond Grails refer to Lantern of Chaldea which are used to raise a servant's max bond level past level 10.

10. CE Bomb / CE Bombing

CE Bomb is a low rarity Craft Essence (1* or 2*) that has been raised using other low rarity CEs so it accumulates experience. These CE bombs are then used to raise high rarity CEs to max level (Lvl. 100 for 5* or Lvl. 80 for 4*).

CE Bombing is a method of leveling up Craft Essences using the least amount of QP as possible, it also allows Masters to save inventory slots for other CEs.

There is not a definitive step by step guide and how to do this method. But, in short, it costs less to feed CEs into a lower rarity CE (the CE bomb) and using that to raise a higher rarity CE than it does to feed CEs directly into the higher rarity CE.

11. Cookie

Cookie refers to Class Gems, a material used to level up Servant skills.

12. Door

Door refers to Door of the Champion enemies, which appear mostly in daily quests and drops QP as rewards.

13. Esports

When used as a whole, it refers to the act of minturning/Turn Attack.

When used to describe a servant, it refers to intentionally not fully raising a servant so the servant dies more easily and thus more buffers can be swapped in. The ideology is that once a servant buffs its usefulness goes down dramatically so it's more beneficial to die at that point. Esports servants are the minimum level necessary to unlock skills and are unfoued.

Common examples of esports servants are:
-Level 70 Zhuge Liang with 10/1/10 skills
-Level 70 Scathach-Skadi with 10/10/10 skills
-Level 60 Chiron with x/10/10 skills
-Level 40 Paul Bunyan with 10/1/10 skills
-Level 40 Elizabeth Lancer with 10/10/X skills

14. Facecard

Facecard is a term used to make reference to all Servant's attack cards except for their NP card.

15. Fou Paw

Fou Paw is a term used to make reference to Beast's Footprint item.

16. GSSR

GSSR stands for Guaranteed SSR, which refers to the Lucky Bag Summoning Campaigns that happen twice a year: once during the New Year Campaign and once during Anniversary. These are a one time pull per event where, by spending 15 paid quartz, you are guaranteed a 5* servant. Anniversary GSSRs are also guaranteed a 4* servant in the pull.

17. Hand

Hand refers to Arm of Dawn enemies, which appear mostly in daily quests and drop experience cards (Embers) as rewards.

18. Hogwarts

Hogwarts is a term used to make reference to Mage's Association Uniform Mystic Code.

19.  Kscope / Scope / MLBscope / Superscope

Kscope, or Scope, refers to the Kaleidoscope Craft Essence.

MLBscope refers to a Max Limit Broken Kaleidoscope.

Superscope is a term used to refer a MLB Kaleidoscope that is also Lvl. 100.

20.  Ladder Event

Ladder events are specific events that feature a system with points that a Master can accumulate by completing quests. When a Master reaches a certain checkpoint, it gets rewarded with ascension/skill materials, QP, Mana Prisms, etc. without needing to purchase them from a shop.

21.  Lotto Event

Lotto events are specific events that feature a unique system of rewarding materials through a lottery roulette. The roulette pulls from a box that has a set of predetermined goodies in them (Ascension/skill materials, QP, experience cards, Mana Prisms, etc.).

Boxes are rolled with a specific event lottery currency that you obtain alongside the standard shop currencies. Once a box has been completely cleared out of items, it can be reset, replenishing all of the materials and other items within it.

22. Max Roll

Max Roll is a situation when a Servant deals the highest possible damage within RNG parameters. In the damage formula, the value of a max roll is equal to 1.099x.

23. Min Roll

Min Roll is a situation when a Servant deals the lowest possible damage within RNG parameters. In the damage formula, the value of a min roll is equal to 0.9x.

It can also reference the worst possible roll in a multi-quartz roll (1 4* card and 10 3* cards).

24. Node

Node is a term used to make reference to any quest in Fate/Grand Order.

25. NP Loop

NP Loop is a gameplay mechanic consisting in using a Servant’s NP and getting the necessary NP Refund to use the same NP in the next turn, without needing to use normal cards to gain NP charge. It is still a considered NP Loop if a Servant needs to use their own charge skill or receive charge from another Servant.

For more information, please refer to NP Gain and Refund.

26.  NP Spam

NP Spam is a gameplay mechanic consisting in Servants using their NP and normal cards to gain enough NP charge to use the same NP again in the next turn.

The difference between NP Loop and NP Spam is that the former doesn’t rely on normal cards, while the latter uses them to fill a Servant's NP Charge gauge back to 100%.

27. Omnifarmer/Omnilooper

Omnifarmer is a servant that is used universally for the purpose of farming. Omnilooper is contextually equivalent but emphasizes more on the looping aspect, whether that be buster, arts, or quick.

Common examples of omnifarmers are:
-Space Ishtar (Astarte)
-Arjuna Alter (Junao)
-Morgan
-Summer Ibuki
-Kukulkan
-Archetype: Earth

28. Plugsuit

Plugsuit is a term used to make reference to Chaldea Combat Uniform Mystic Code. On JP, it can also be used to refer to the Decisive Battle Mystic Code.

29. Refund

Refund is the total NP charge that a Servant gets when attacking. The amount of refund that a Servant gets depends on many variables including: NP level, enemy HP, trait advantage, enemy class, NP gain, overkill hits, etc.

30. S1/S2/S3

S1/S2/S3 refer to a servant's first/second/third skills. For example, Siegfried's S2 is his Disengage skill.

31. Save Scumming

Save Scumming is a gameplay tactic consisting in closing the Fate/Grand Order app in the middle of a turn. This is done in order to reset the battle's RNG in case the outcome on the current turn is not favorable to the Master's strategy.

32. Spook

Spook is the situation when a Master obtains a non-rate up Servant in a gacha banner instead of the Servant on rateup.

33. Starbomb

Starbomb refers to various Craft Essences that provide crit stars when a servant equipped with that CE enters the battlefield. Examples of starbomb CEs are Golden Captures the Carp and Calamity Jane's Bond CE.

34. Steroid

Steroid is a term used to refer any type of skill that increase the damage of Servants.

35. Turn Attack (TA)

Turn Attack is a gameplay style which consists in completing a quest (usually a high difficulty quest) in the fewest amount of turns. TAs require previous preparation, a deep understanding of the game mechanics and involves a high amount of RNG. Also called minturning.

36. Welfare Servant

Welfare Servant is a term that makes reference to all 4* Servants that are given for free in events and special campaigns.

37. XCC System

XCC System refers to a team composed of a DPS servant (with an Arts type NP) and two Caster Artorias (commonly referred to as Castoria). This team is aimed at clearing three enemy waves in three turns through the NP Looping mechanic.

For more information, please refer to NP Loop.

XCC System = DPS Servant (X) + Support Castoria (C) + Own Castoria (C)

These team compositions generally have a lower barrier of entry than XSS or XVV compositions because of the lower necessity for Kaleidoscope and greater Mystic Code freedom.

38. XSS System

XSS System refers to a team composed of a DPS Servant (with a Quick type NP) and two Scathach-Skadis (either Caster or Ruler). This system usually requires the use of a Superscope and any Mystic Code (with the exception of Plugsuit) to clear three enemy waves in three turns using NP Loop mechanic.

For more information, please refer to NP Loop.

In other words, XSS is a farming system that allows Quick NP Servants to get enough charge and use their NP three times in a row without relying in normal cards, in order to farm in a time and slot efficient manner.

XSS System = DPS Servant (X) + Support Skadi (S) + Own Skadi (S)

The DPS Servant has to get enough refund (at least 49%) while performing their NP in the 1st and 2nd waves so that both Skadis (aside from the Quick cardmod and Defense Down on enemies) can compensate the remaining NP gauge.

DPS Servant Refund (49%) + Skadi's 3rd skill (50%) = 99% (the game rounds 99% as 100%)

Certain XSS compositions require specific Mystic Codes such as A Fragment of 2004.

39. XVV System

XVV System refers to a team composition of a DPS servant (with a Buster type NP) and two Koyanskaya of Lights (commonly referred to as Tamamo Vitch or just Vitch). This system usually requires the use of a Superscope while Mystic Code usage is dependent on the DPS servant's battery values and cooldown. Common MCs used in XVV comps are Atlas Academy Uniform and Plugsuit.

Unlike XCC and XSS setups, this one relies more on brute forcing battery through a combination of a servant's personal battery and support servant's batteries. The compositions are thus more akin to NP spamming. Vitch's cooldown reduction on her battery can also enable a DPS servant to use their battery twice in one fight. Because of the brute forcing of battery in these types of compositions, the number of overkill hits is irrelevant: either you kill the enemy or you don't.

You will also see Oberon prominently featured in these compositions due to his large 70% battery which is mandatory for some buster servants to reach that 300% total NP gauge amount.

XVV System = DPS Servant (X) + Support Vitch (V) + Own Vitch (V)

XVVO System = DPS Servant (X) + Support Vitch (V) + Own Vitch (V) + Own Oberon (O)

When answering the question "what is good", there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration, some of which this article will attempt to address.

Proper contextualization

What does it mean to contextualize? Servants can only be considered good or bad if they are compared within the context of a specific situation - something that could be good in one situation may be bad in another.

Why isn't there an agreed upon "general" gameplay

If we look at it from a logical standpoint, the phrase "general" gameplay refers to farming. Why is that? A standard two week event uses 4032 natural AP, during which we may clear a challenge quest once for the reward and occasionally do a few boss encounters during the story quests. The rest of the event will usually consist of farming trash mobs for event currency and the like. It wouldn't be far off the mark to say that the ratio of farming to bosses is 99:1.

However, not everyone considers farming to be general gameplay. If one considers farming to be easy, they could be of the opinion that challenge quests are all that matters. On the other hand, some people may think the opposite, as almost every challenge quest that is not NPC-locked can be soloed by a friend support. Yet others may be of a differing opinion, and consider farming to be as important as high difficulty content.

Even within a specific context such as challenge quests, there is no "general" gameplay that can be easily agreed upon, as people often utilize different strategies, all of which may be suitable for the situation at hand. For example, one might consider Jeanne to be the best soloer for the Saber Alter Memorial Quest due to her being able to completely trivialize Salter's damage output. She makes an otherwise challenging clear very safe, if a bit slow.

But there is also the option of soloing with Cu Alter, albeit with a lot more RNG, as evidenced by the savescumming in the following video.

【FGO】超越极限！黑狗单挑三周年300万黑呆_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

-

tremprovin

Based on the two solos, would it be better to say that Jeanne is the better soloer for challenge quests? The answer is no - Cu Alter is currently the only servant, to my knowledge, that has soloed both the Dark Round Shadow CQ and King Hassan CQ.

【FGO日服】黑狗单挑星战二期真高难，暗黑圆桌骑士车轮战！_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

%E6%89%93%E5%BE%97%E8%B6%8A%E5%BF%AB%E5%B0%B1%E8%B6%8A%E7%AE%80%E5%8D%95.jpg%0A%0A%E5%A6%82%E6%9E%9C%E8%BF%90%E6%B0%94%E5%A5%BD%E5%8A%A0%E9%9B%B7%E6%96%AF%E4%B8%8D%E8%87%AA%E5%85%85%E7%9A%84%E8%AF%9D5T%E5%8F%AF%E4%BB%A5%E8%84%B8%E6%8E%A5%E5%AE%9D%E5%85%B7%E4%B8%8D%E7%94%A8%E6%A2%85%E8%8F%B2%E6%96%AF…

元首の复仇

Would it be better to judge "general" gameplay viability based on the number of CQs that a specific servant has soloed? Or would it be more reasonable to only evaluate their performance in a subsection of CQs that people consider to be highly difficult (e.g. King Hassan CQ)? Maybe even the amount of RNG needed to successfully solo a CQ in the first place? These are decisions that cannot be easily made. What we can say is that there are options that are better suited for different situations depending on their circumstances and resources (such as the Saber Alter Jeanne solo requiring much less RNG and, by extension, real time investment than the Cu Alter solo).

Regardless, it is clear that even if specific factors and circumstances are taken into consideration, people can still have different perceptions on what constitutes "general" gameplay. Even when looking at the well-defined category of "soloing challenge quests", there are many different factors that can be taken into account when determining the value of a specific servant or strategy. If we evaluated a broader category (e.g. simply clearing challenge quests, not just through solos), we’d find it significantly more difficult to categorize servants based on gameplay. There are potentially thousands of ways through which challenge quests could be cleared, if we don’t limit ourselves based on an evaluation metric - ease of min-turn, solo capability, low rarity are all criteria that come to mind. Should all CQs be considered equal? If not, how should their difficulty be ranked?

If someone was to talk about "general" gameplay without giving details, they could potentially disagree with (or even mislead) other people due to differing priorities. If someone were to use only min-turns as the standard for their gameplay and give servants, strategies and setups based solely upon that criteria, they would obviously disagree with someone who values a different strategy. Hopefully I have made it clear how difficult it is to hold a discussion on even ground without establishing a clear standard.

Setting the goalposts

So how can one determine what kind of gameplay would be "good" for them? Sadly, there is no right answer. You have to set your own requirements. People can give you recommendations or provide sample setups but ultimately, it is on you to decide how you want to play the game.

A common requirement a player might have could be that they would like to clear content with the least possible amount of investment. To meet this standard, they could easily look up friend solos for whatever node they are running, since it wouldn’t cost them much, and would allow them to clear content quickly. You can see many story solos in this reddit thread. Furthermore, there are many community threads, discussion forums, and Discord servers in which people are willing to add newer players to their friend lists to assist them with their gameplay.

Even if your goal is to clear content without being carried by friend supports, there are many viable setups that would meet your requirements, such as low rarity clears. Regardless, the most important thing to do is to first define your requirements, standards, and specifications.

There's more than meets the eye

Something that one should keep in mind when evaluating different gameplay styles is the amount of work and effort that goes on behind the scenes for executing these setups.

This especially applies to runs where RNG is present - whether it be a solo, min-turn, low rarity only, etc.

For example, here is a really high RNG run:

【FGO羽之神勇千古无二】项羽单挑监狱塔车轮——虚之门·七罪到来_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

%E7%9B%B8%E5%85%B3%E6%B8%B8%E6%88%8F%EF%BC%9A%E5%91%BD%E8%BF%90%E5%86%A0%E4%BD%8D%E6%8C%87%E5%AE%9A%0A%E6%84%9F%E8%B0%A2%20@%E8%BD%B6%E4%BA%BA%20%E7%9A%84%E7%9B%91%E7%8B%B1%E5%A1%94%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C%E7%BA%BF%EF%BC%8C%20@asfake%20%E7%9A%84%E5%8A%A9%E6%88%98%EF%BC%8C%20@Asuka%E5%AE%B6%E9%A9%B9%20%E7%…

赤瞳的斯卡哈

And here is a really low RNG run:

【不是打牌】国服FGO90级阿瓦隆剑圣无令咒单挑监狱塔车轮高难·虚之门（谢谢dalao的梅林）_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

1.%E5%86%8D%E6%AC%A1%E6%84%9F%E8%B0%A2%E7%BE%A4%E9%87%8CPZ%E5%A4%A7%E4%BD%AC%E7%9A%84%E4%BA%94%E5%AE%9D%E6%A2%85%E6%9E%97%EF%BC%88%E4%BB%A5%E5%8F%8A%E5%B8%AE%E5%BF%99%E7%9A%84%E8%80%81%E7%99%BD%E5%92%8C%E7%8B%97%E8%9B%8B%EF%BC%89%0D%0A2.%E5%A4%A7%E4%BD%AC%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E8%82%9D%E5%87%BA%E6%BB%A1…

肉松-子

To someone who doesn't know how to notice when RNG is present, they might think the Merlin solo is more difficult than the Xiang Yu solo as it takes more video time. But the fact of the matter is that the Xiang Yu run required several resets and took a lot longer. In contrast, the second video is just long but without much RNG at all and can likely be replicated in 1-2 tries easily.

Before attempting to emulate similar strategies, one should always try to understand the RNG involved in them. One method in which this can be done is by evaluating how much RNG is required for being dealt good servant cards, or beneficial enemy actions. This, however, is a topic for a more comprehensive article.

While one might initially come to the conclusion that a lot of servants can solo the aforementioned CQ, it becomes evident that some runs are not what the majority of players should attempt to do as the purpose behind it is to showcase the limits to which a servant can be pushed and takes a tedious amount of time, unless the player is prepared to put in all that time in order to replicate it or do something similar.

People have different goals

After seeing the variation in methods, it's not hard to imagine how players can have different restrictions. While some players might not want to be carried by a friend’s servant, others simply wish to clear the story boss encounters in the cheapest way possible. In the latter case, those players would certainly go with a friend solo, as their restrictions are different from those of the former.

If you are a player who values taunt/buff stacking in their content clears, you might consider CEs such as poster girl and outrage to be good investments. To other people, who are satisfied with simply clearing the content in question as cheaply as possible (e.g. pressing AAA with Jeanne for 1.5 hours in the Saber Alter Memorial quest), the aforementioned taunt CEs would appear worthless.

To players who attempt to min-turn challenge quests and, to that end, rely on buff stacking, a Jeanne solo method would have no value due to the differing means in which they aim to achieve their goals, even within the same context (challenge quests).

One should always try to use the right tool for the job. This does not mean that if someone doesn't utilize a certain tool, they are incapable of using it at all. If someone owns a screwdriver and rarely uses it, that doesn't mean they don't know how to use a screwdriver - it just means they haven't had any reason to use one. In this case, it would be pointless to discuss the value of a screwdriver with them as they have no need for one.

Another thing to understand is that even if one is abiding by their own specific restrictions and requirements, it is possible (even likely) that they do not have the most optimal comp possible.

People have different benchmarks

Because people may have varying benchmarks for what is good, it is pointless to compare them unless there is a clearly defined task or context in which they are set. Some people might consider certain servants good because they are capable of min-turning/soloing various CQs while others might consider them bad because they are not capable of doing the same in specific CQs. It is entirely possible for someone to consider a servant to be "bad" while you think they’re "good" due to the difference in benchmarks, even within the same context.

One notable example of this is Kama, who has a charm on her NP. While some people might consider her to be bad for minturns due to the charm preventing the enemy unit from attacking, others might consider her to be one of the best as she is the only servant at the time of this writing to 5 turn clear full gauge Kama without command spells or refills (although the run did take ~100 hours).

【FGO竞速组】完全体BeastⅢ／L 迦摩5T_哔哩哔哩 (゜-゜)つロ 干杯~-bilibili

%E5%85%B3%E5%9C%A8%E5%89%AF%E6%9C%AC%E9%87%8C%E5%87%A0%E5%A4%A9%E5%90%8E%E7%BB%88%E4%BA%8E%E8%A7%A3%E6%94%BE%EF%BC%8C%E8%AE%A9%E9%95%BF%E8%BE%BE%E4%B8%80%E7%99%BE%E5%A4%9A%E4%B8%AA%E5%B0%8F%E6%97%B6%E7%9A%84%E5%8A%AA%E5%8A%9B%E6%B2%A1%E6%9C%89%E7%99%BD%E8%B4%B9%EF%BC%8C%E4%B9%9F%E7%89%B9%E5%88%AB%E6…

Pinh丶

Conclusion

How good or bad a servant, strategy, or setup is depends on your personal goals. It is important to do research before deciding on the best gameplay style for yourself - don't let others decide how you should play the game in your stead.

Class advantage in Fate/Grand Order is a fairly straight forward concept to understand and apply. The gist of it is that any unit will deal 2x (advantage), 1.5x (half advantage), 0.5x (disadvantage), or 1x (no advantage) damage to another unit depending on the classes of the attacker and the class of the target. A common piece of advice given to beginners is to always bring classes with either full or half advantage to a node, as that will usually be enough to trivialize a fight, barring some exceptions such as bosses or challenge quests that may have unique gimmicks.

Although class advantage is usually the primary consideration when constructing a party for a specific node, many players often overlook or are unaware of the effectiveness of other factors that should be considered when deciding on which servants to include – the most important of these being powermods, anti-trait buffs, and supereffective mods.

This article will attempt to outline notable applications and examples of the aforementioned buffs in both farming and boss encounter/challenge quest contexts where class advantage may not necessarily be the best avenue to pursue, depending on a player’s resources.

Disclaimer: The purpose of this article is not to downplay the effectiveness of class advantage or explicitly advocate for the use of servants with powermods, anti-trait buffs, or supereffective mods over the alternatives that do have class advantage. The vast majority of situations, both in farming and high difficulty encounters, will still have class advantage as their most effective answers.

The purpose of this article is to highlight the existence of scenarios in which damage neutral options exist as competitive and viable alternatives to class advantage due in large part to the impact of the aforementioned buff types.

This article will refer to the attribute mechanic for the purpose of calculating noble phantasm damage, more information on which can be found here:

Attributes

Attributes are a gameplay mechanic in Fate/Grand Order. It works similarly to the Servant class triangle. Each Servant and Enemy has an innate attribute that is both weak to and strong against other attributes. The Attribute relationships are explained from Emiya’s Interlude Quest and by Da Vinci du…

Fate/Grand Order Wikia

NP Damage Information Taken From:

NP Damage Comparisons

Notes Attack calculated with+1000 Fou and maximum level without Grail Ascension Self-Buff level 10 and Passive Skill are included Overcharge are 100% Class attack multiplier are included Class advantage and Attribute modifier are not include Interlude Quests and Strengthening Quests are included Def…

Fate/Grand Order Wikia

Important terms / acronyms used in this article can be found here:

Fate/Grand Order Glossary

Fate/Grand Order has a considerable amount of terms that are crucial forunderstanding the game’s mechanics. Having a knowledge of these terms anddefinitions can greatly improve the strategies and team compositions thatMasters can utilize in quests. In addition to this, it can also improve under…

Atlas AcademyNet

How NP Damage is Calculated

For the sake of convenience, all links to entries of servants currently released in NA will lead to their NA entry in the Atlas Academy database - strengthenings that are exclusive to the JP version of the game can be viewed by switching to the JP database via the options at the top of the page:

Farming

The following damage calculations assume that all servants have received their strengthenings, even if they are exclusive to the JP version of the game at the time of writing.

Dragon Fangs:

Deming - New Chicago

Of the 282 playable servants in the game at the time of writing, 44 of them require Dragon Fangs to meet skill and/or ascension requirements, making it a common material – and one that is needed in large quantities.

The node consists of 3 waves of rider wyverns, with wave 3 having a ~110k HP gold wyvern. Conventional wisdom would have you bring AoE assassins or berserkers to this node.

NP Damage to rider wyverns (earth attribute):

The hardest hitting AoE assassin is SSR Shuten-Douji who at NP1 deals a total of 59,040 damage with self-buffs and class advantage.

Welfare SR Scáthach (Assassin) at NP5 will deal 49,924 damage with self-buffs and class advantage.

However, if we choose to factor in SEs into our teambuilding for this node, we find that there is an SR servant who outdamages Scathach despite being only NP1 and class neutral.

SR Siegfried at NP1 will deal a significant 51,313 damage with self buffs and no class advantage against the wyverns, due to the PM he possesses on his third skill and the SE on his noble phantasm, both against dragons. At NP2 he deals 64,140 damage against dragon enemies, outdamaging an NP1 Shuten-Douji.

For many NA players, Siegfried will actually be their best option for farming this node, as he is both more accessible than the SSR assassins and outdamages the NP5 welfare SR assassin. While the upcoming welfare SR Gray will outdamage an NP1 Siegfried, he still outdamages her at NP2.

Aurora Steel:

Castle of Ice and Snow - Icy Bridge

Commonly referred to as soap, aurora steel is required for a number of powerful servants such as Skadi, Space Ishtar – who recently rose to further prominence due to the release of Caster Artoria (more information on that here: https://atlasacademy.io/caster-artorias-impact-on-the-game/), and Valkyries.

The node consists of 3 waves of rider Valkyries, all of whom possess the divine trait, which is what we will be focusing on. The main difficulty in farming this node is the presence of a 180k HP Valkyrie in wave 3.

NP5 SSR Shuten-Douji will do the most damage in wave 3, with her self-buffed damage being 79,569. However, she suffers from attribute disadvantage (0.9x damage), as her attribute is earth while that of the Valkyries is sky. This also applies to fellow AoE assassin SSR Semiramis, whose attribute is also earth and suffers from an unreliable damage buff in her third skill, which requires 8 critical stars to activate. The remaining AoE assassin SSR Cleopatra, while possessing a 1.1x attribute advantage (man-sky), possesses an unreliable damage buff in the form of Imperial Privilege (40% chance of failure).

There are various other alternatives, including alter egos such as Okita Souji (Alter) and Sessyoin Kiara, both of whom possess half class advantage (1.5x) with Okita Souji (Alter) in particular possessing a 1.1x attribute advantage (man-sky).

Since batteries are often the primary consideration when constructing teams for farming, we will be looking at the highest damaging servants possessing batteries from both classes – Semiramis and Okita Souji (Alter).

NP damage to rider Valkyries (sky attribute):

However, we find that if we approach the node not through class advantage but through SEs, one class neutral servant comes to mind as a functional alternative to the aforementioned limited SSRs due to his NP's massive anti-divine SE – Karna.

NP damage to rider Valkyries (sky attribute):

Impressively, his damage is comparable to an NP5 Semiramis with her conditional buff and strengthening (currently exclusive to the JP version of the game) accounted for. Although he is not the most optimal servant for clearing this node, he will be the best option for players who either don’t have Okita Souji (Alter) or don’t want to work around Semiramis’ conditional skill 3 (assuming her strengthening is available). In addition, he is permanently available in the summoning pool while both of the aforementioned servants (and all the other SSR AoE assassins and alter egos) are limited, meaning that one is more likely to possess copies of him over the alternatives.

Spirit Root:

Camelot - Holy City

Putting aside how one should look to acquire spirit roots from event shops instead of farming them due to their rather low drop rate of 165.7 AP/Drop (value courtesy of Atlas Academy's drop lookup tool), this node consists of 2 waves of various low knight / berserker class mobs followed by a third wave saber spriggin sitting pretty at an intimidating 236k HP.

For this example, we will look at how effective an SE can be at making a "mediocre" option more useful than more obvious choices within the context of class advantage.

NP damage to saber spriggan (earth attribute):

We look at Emiya (Alter) here because he is the hardest hitting ST archer after his strengthening.

Chloe, or Kuro, is the first of two welfare SR ST archers. Notably, she possesses a massive 50% battery, making her extremely convenient for farming purposes.

Altera the San(ta), or Santera, is the second of the two welfare SR ST archers. Although she deals slightly more damage than Kuro, her battery is significantly smaller at 20% and she is also attribute neutral at 1.0x (star-earth) while Kuro possesses a 1.1x attribute advantage (sky-earth). For these reasons, we will be looking at Kuro over Santera for comparison purposes.

If a player does not possess either an SR or an SSR archer, their best option with full class advantage would appear to be David. At first glance, David appears to be a significantly worse option than the previously mentioned servants as his base NP damage, even after his strengthening, pales compared to that of the gold archers - 89,195 to be precise. However, his strengthening also gave his NP an additional effect - an SE against "Giant" type enemies. As spriggans do indeed possess the "Giant" trait, his NP damage jumps to....

NP damage to saber spriggan (earth attribute):

This is an incredible amount of damage for a 3* servant, but how well does he perform in an actual farming scenario?

If we assume that the goal is to use the servant's noble phantasm immediately on wave 3, there are two basic setups that can be compared. We will be comparing David with Kuro, as the latter has the largest battery of the aforementioned servants, making it easier for her to utilize her NP.

Setups:

In a setup where Waver is present, Kuro does not require any additional starting charge from her CE, as his 50% total charge and her own 50% battery allow her to NP without additional assistance. The strongest damage CE in the game (with the exception of event specific PM CEs) is undoubtedly Black Grail, as it gives not only a incredible 80% boost to NP damage when MLB, but also possesses a rare attack stat of 2400 at max level, while most full attack CEs cap out at 2000.

Due to David not possessing his own battery, we give him Aerial Drive - which has not only a full attack stat of 2000, but confers him with 50% starting charge and both buster and NP damage buffs, which are multiplicative with his and Waver 's attack buffs. Aerial Drive also has the benefit of being an easily accessible CE, as it was obtainable via the shop in the Halloween 3 event and its rerun. In contrast, Black Grail is a gacha only CE that has only ever had one rateup - the Kintoki release banner.

With all that taken into account, let's see how the two setups fare:

NP damage to saber spriggan (earth attribute):

As you can see, David manages to edge out Kuro despite being a lower cost / rarity option while also utilizing a more accessible setup due to the strength of his SE. While both setups would be sufficient to clear the spriggan, the purpose of this example was to demonstrate the significant impact an SE can have on NP damage.

Boss Encounters / Challenge Quests

The vast majority of the "high difficulty" content in FGO can be cleared relatively easily by employing class advantage or solo support tactics. However, there are some instances that demand / allow for a more creative approach in lieu of simply taking a random class advantage servant to the node in question.

Saber Alter Memorial Quest

A rather infamous challenge quest that was available as part of the memorial quests during FGO's 2nd and 3rd anniversaries, the Saber Alter memorial quest was actually fairly straightforward and could be easily cleared through various strategies such as soloing with Jeanne d'Arc or Archer Artoria. That being said, some people took it upon themselves to TA (turn attack) the CQ - clearing it in the minimum number of turns possible - 3 in this case.

One TA of this CQ used Sigurd, who possesses no inherent class advantage against Saber Alter but does have an anti-dragon SE on his NP. This is significant because Saber Alter, along with all but one (Caster Artoria) of the various Artoria variants, possesses the Dragon trait.

From the video description:

Some thought processes:
Among buster servants with neutral damage, only three: Jalter, Carmilla (actually a quick servant), and Sigurd can 3 turn w/o CS. Sigurd, with 100% crit dmg, Earth attribute, and a special NP effect on dragons makes this possible.

The point of mentioning this Sigurd clear is because it demonstrates the power of SEs, even when there is no class advantage of which to speak. Of the aforementioned servants, Carmilla also possesses an SE on her NP - hers being against female enemies.

The strength of the anti-dragon SE becomes apparent when we calculate his base NP damage against dragons with no class advantage and compare it to those of the ST SSR archers who do have class advantage.

NP damage to saber Artoria Pendragon (Alter) (man attribute):

Even without class advantage, Sigurd significantly outdamages Orion and comes fairly close to Archer of Shinjuku and Artoria due to his SE and 1.1x attribute advantage (earth-man) against Saber Alter.

All Sabers Must Die!

Mysterious Heroine X, or MHX for short, is a contentious servant. Regarded as fairly weak on release (and rightfully so), she has since received 3 interludes and 1 strengthening, making her the first servant to receive 4 buffs. Her original issue was that she had an anti-saber / saberface niche (PM on skill 3 and SE on NP) as an...assassin. The common consensus was that if one really wanted an anti saber servant, it'd be better to simply bring an archer servant. Even after all her buffs, she is prone to being overlooked as an option in saber / saberface encounters.

So how good is she really?

MHX NP Damage Calculations (NP5):

So what are the implications of these numbers? For comparison's sake, the class advantage damage values for all ST SSRs (with the exception of riders and avengers because it is hard to justify bringing MHX against casters and rulers) will be listed below.

NP Damage for NP5 ST SSRs with class advantage:

MHX at NP5 compared to the ST SSRs of other classes at NP5:

For a final point of comparison, we compare MHX to the two welfare ST SR archers as they would be the best options against single saber enemies for players who lack an SSR to fill that niche.

NP damage to sabers:

From the numbers, we can see that NP5 MHX outdamages both NP5 Santera and Kuro vs sabers, even when not hitting the saberface trait. However, it would be misleading to imply that MHX is better than Santera or Kuro just because she outdamages them at NP5 as most players will not have an SSR at NP5, and a limited one at that.  

On that note, let's see how MHX stacks up to them at differing NP levels.

NP damage to sabers (no saberface trait):

While MHX does only ~534 less damage than Santera at NP3 and outdamages Kuro even at NP2 vs sabers, Santera and Kuro have an easier time using their NPs as they both have their own batteries. So while MHX may be an appealing option in a vacuum due to her high damage, one must always consider the practicality of their setups.

For challenge quests, high difficulty content, and boss encounters, the relatively regular frequency with which the various Artoria Pendragon, Jeanne d'Arc, and Nero Claudius variants (all of whom have the saberface trait) appear as enemy units establishes MHX as a viable servant around which to build a team, should the player not possess servants with class advantage that outdamage her in these encounters. This also applies to any saber class enemies in general, as the 50% PM on her third skill makes her competitive with the gold archers.

This is not to say that the raw damage values are the only things to consider when team building. One must also take into account other aspects of the servants being used, foremost among these being battery and PM/SE/Anti-Traits on NPs. For example, although NP5 MHX outdamages NP5 Kama vs riders, the latter possesses a 50% battery that makes it easier for her to utilize her NP with minimal assistance. An NP5 Jack (anti-trait buff on NP against females) who is hitting class advantage on a female unit will heavily outdamage NP5 MHX vs the same enemy, assuming she is not hitting the saberface trait.

In conclusion, her strength as a standard ST assassin aside, MHX fills a relevant anti-saberface niche and works well against saber class enemies due to the strength of her PM and SE.

Final Thoughts:

To reiterate the earlier disclaimer, the purpose of this article was not to downplay class effectiveness, nor was it to overly exaggerate the impact of buffs such as PMs, SEs, and anti-traits. It was to point out scenarios in which damage neutral options existed as competitive alternatives to class advantage or existing class advantage options were bolstered, both through the impact of the aforementioned buff types. There were other notable examples that could have been given, such as the infamous Camelot Gawain encounter to which people usually bring Euryale or Orion (anti-male SE on NP and anti-male PM on skill 2 respectively) or Medb (anti-male SE on NP) to a certain boss encounter in Lostbelt 5. That being said, the hope is that anyone who reads this article will be inspired to be more creative with their resources when approaching team building.

All videos and images included belong to their respective publishers.

All images, unless otherwise noted, are official Fate Grand Order game assets.

The celebration of FGO's 5th anniversary in Japan has brought some gifts and quality of life changes we've come to expect by now, but the biggest impact by far was left by the newly released limited SSR Servant – Artoria Caster.

FGO's metagame has always revolved around consistent Noble Phantasm usage, since it represents the most reliable way of clearing content. Castoria definitely represents the natural evolution of that thought process – her skills provide a wide variety of buffs, whether it be to a single ally or to the entire team:

• 20% attack up for her entire team – on par with Merlin, 10% less than Waver
• 30% teamwide charge and 20% targeted – stronger than any other Servant
• 50% arts up – on par with Tamamo-no-Mae
• 30% NP gain up – 15% weaker than Nero Bride's 45%
• 50% powermod against enemies classified as Threats to Humanity – a small niche, but not a bad thing to have

The charge she offers alone is enough to make her the new premier support, dethroning Waver from the position. 30% charge comes as a great boon for servants who have less than 30% charge themselves, such as Karna or Ozymandias. The other buffs she provides, however, elevate her into an amazing support for looping comps, as we will showcase in this article.

Finally, her Noble Phantasm offers another 30-50% Attack Up (depending on its rank), a debuff removal, as well as Special Invincibility. This new buff blocks the effects of Pierce Invincibility but does not block Instant Death effects (Chen Gong bypasses her invulnerability too), nor buff removals, so it's not an omnipotent tool as it may seem at first glance.

Since her release, many people have recorded various ways to clear content with her. We will note some, while a larger list can be found in our Discord server.

Summer Musashi – (3-3-3) Berserker node

Salieri – (3-3-3) Berserker node

Chen Gong – (3-3-3) Rider node

Caster Gilgamesh – (3-3-3) Berserker node

Jason – (3-3-3) Lancer node

In case it hasn't been made clear, Caster Artoria enables a plethora of incredibly strong strategies, the most obvious being arts looping – clearing a node with only the usage of a single Servant's Noble Phantasm and Servant/Mystic Code skills. The main benefit of such setups is lower time investment, since they don't rely on Plugsuit. They are also a perfect choice for events thanks to the reliance on only one Servant's Noble Phantasm. That means most, if not all of the CE slots can be filled with event CEs.

With those concepts in mind, a large number of servants synergize well with Caster Artoria. Arts-based Noble Phantasms inherently have the best refund capabilities, and Castoria offers what the niche lacked – a single support with all of the buffs they required. However, some Servants are clear standouts. Particularly, due to her innate stats, damage and skills, we would like to single out Astarte.

The easiest way to showcase their synergy would be through a practical example.

We'll start with the most common type of farming nodes – three enemies in each wave. As an example, we will showcase the clear of the Ancient Bell of Tranquility farming node, Eight Gates Cave in Lostbelt 3.

More detailed breakdown (click to expand)

Since we're trying to showcase a stable clear, we won't be calculating the damage or refund with Astarte's 20% Arts Up on her third skill. Also, since damage can vary by ±10% due to the random modifier, we will use the lowest possible rolls in our calculations. Due to that, the damage and charge gained will differ slightly from the ones shown in the video.

Astarte gains a 20% modifier to her Noble Phantasm over each turn, which explains the increased damage between the first and second turn. We use the charging skills of only one of the Castorias in the first turn in order to keep the charges from the other for future turns. Astarte's third skill provides us with 50% charge in the first turn, bringing her to a total of 100%.

If we instead used the skills of both Castorias on the first turn, the charge gained from the NP would fall just under 100% total, even with Astarte's passive 3.5% charge added in. This might not be a problem when attacking different classes, but it forces us into this particular skill order here.

Even if the Astarte isn't NP5, she can refund. However, her damage may become a serious issue, gating her from being able to consistently clear some fights. To offer a clear comparison, we can showcase this in the following video of the same node.

It is very important to note that both of these clears were done without a CE on Astarte. This is to demonstrate that the clear could be done with any event CE, enabling setups with full event bonus lineups. If we used a Black Grail or Kaleidoscope, this would've been a trivial clear.

Finally, there has been an increasing number of nodes with partially filled waves – nodes which have only one or two enemies in some of the first two waves. Even in these situations, one could use Astarte with double Castoria to loop, with the assistance of an MLB Kaleidoscope. We offer a video of the Interstellar City: West node in Olympus, which drops Dawnlight Reactor Cores and Fruits of Longevity.

FGO has been introducing increasingly stronger servants in the past few years, and Caster Artoria definitely exemplifies that design philosophy. Her kit is overloaded, and she is likely the single strongest support in the game at the time of writing.

All the videos included belong to their respective publishers.