#also the main boss will become super defense buffed so why keep attacking it

[fisherrprince]

the Alexander raids are easy for a first time dps in roulette you can basically fumble through the whole thing and be fine except if you s

KILL IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KILL THIS THING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KILL IT NOW !!!!!! LB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! UNAUTHORIZED METAL THING SHOOT IT DOWN NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[murasaki-murasame]

After a billion years of waiting, the 2nd anniversary digest is out, and even though it didn’t talk about quite as much stuff as I expected, the stuff it DID show off was extremely good on just about every level, and oh boy do I have some thoughts about it, lol.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this one, lmao. There’s so much stuff they talked about, and so much stuff they DIDN’T even talk about. Like how they didn’t talk about the October events and banners even though they’re teased at on the 2nd anniversary website, which I guess means we’ll have to wait longer for info on that.

we also didn’t get any info on a collab, but I assume they’re going to announce that at the start of November and have the collab itself release a few weeks later.

I’m kinda sad that they accidentally leaked out the existence of guns, but I still got to experience all the shock and surprise about it, so that was fun. I’m really surprised that they’re adding a new weapon type so late into the game. Especially since they don’t seem to be planning to retcon any old adventurers into being gun units, which means that they’re going to make up a super tiny portion of the pool. But I still really like how they work, from what we’ve seen of them.

It’s great that Joe got a new gun alt who everyone gets for free, but it really feels like they screwed him over by making him a 3-star, lol. He’s probably gonna get immediately replaced by any light gun units they introduce after this point. But it’s still nice to see him get some love. He was the perfect unit to go for to showcase the new weapon type.

All the changes to weapon and wyrmprints are extremely overwhelming, so it’ll probably be a while until I have an actual opinion on them. But thus far I think it’s fine, but we REALLY need the ability to save wyrmprint set-ups so we don’t have to spend so much time shuffling them about again and again.

It’s kinda sad that it’s such an eldwater sink if you want to equip the same print to multiple units, but it’s much cheaper to do that with event prints, so you can still fill your team out with some good prints. And on the other hand, this is actually why I’m fine with the fact that so many prints are almost identical now, since it means you have way less of a need to actually spend eldwater to get extra copies. There’s like 4+ different prints that all give 30% skill damage, so you’d never actually have a reason to bother getting extra copies of any of them, if you at least already had all these prints before this update. It does make it harder to keep track of if you end up using like 15+ different prints across a whole team, but still, the eldwater cost is more or less avoidable if you just use different prints with the same effects.

I think the weapon bonus thing is going to be the most grindy, long-term part of this update, but I’m cool with it. It gives everyone something to slowly work towards, like when you’re at the stage of leveling your dojos. The issue is that people will want to max their weapon boosts as quickly as possible, but it’s clearly not designed to be rushed like that.

It’ll all take a lot of getting used to, but I’m happy that they’ve drastically cut down on the amount of weapons in the game, and made the progression system more linear. Once everyone gets used to it and more people start playing the game after this update, it’ll become more natural.

We also got a bit of an overhaul to the textures and lighting/rendering for all the 3D models, which still feels like a really strange decision to me. It gives them a really different sort of aesthetic, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think if they made it a bit less ‘harsh’ I’d really like it, but at the moment there’s a bit too much contrast between the lighting and the shading, and the black outlining just looks a bit odd.

We also got the big adventurer balance change, and even though it’ll be a while before we’ve got all the new numbers and stuff for everyone, I already get the feeling that Vice is gonna end up way worse than he was before this. Which is sad, since outright nerfing people always sucks, but I get why they did it. It messed with the balance too much to have a 3-star be in like the top 3 for DPS units across the entire game. At the very least they gave him poison on his S1 so he can afflict that more often now, instead of it just being on his S2.

Just going by what they’ve said, and what we can see in-game, one of the really big changes seems to be how basically all of the healers except Grace now have strength buffs on their S1s, which basically all seem to be 15% for 60 seconds. Which is a really interesting way to make healers more relevant, but I like it. I think it doesn’t stack, so you won’t get as much buff uprime as with dedicated buff units, but it at least means they contribute SOMETHING to the team’s DPS.

One other notable change is how T-Hope now has a 15% strength buff on his S1, which makes it pretty much exactly the same as Patia. So that should make auto eCiella a lot faster, with how often he gets that skill off, lol. This was something I expected him to eventually get via a spiral, but in general a lot of stuff in this balance patch feels like mana spiral upgrades in all but name, which is neat.

Lots of characters also got more status punisher stuff, which should hopefully at least make more units stronger. Most of it’s all pretty self-explanatory, but it’s kinda interesting that Norwin is now a poison punisher unit. I guess it’s one way to make him somewhat relevant to the shadow meta, lol.

They also buffed the older gala units, which is great. At least this way they can put off on establishing the precedent of gala mana spirals, by just directly buffing the old ones. We’ll see how it turns out when all the exact numbers have been datamined, but it seems like they’ve addressed the main isseus with G-Mym, G-Sarisse, G-Ranzal, and G-Euden. 

I also noticed that they added defense debuffs to a fair amount of units, and made a lot of existing defense debuff moves land more often, so that’s interesting.

I’m also pretty excited to try out Pipple with this balance patch, since he now gets a 30% strength buff for himself with his S2. It at least makes it so that it’s always worth using whenever you can.

They didn’t announce anything about new endgame bosses like we expected, but it does sound like we’re still getting some eventually, and it’ll just come up later. Which is a good idea, probably, since we need some time to keep focusing on Agito stuff.

And on the note of the Agito fights, and current endgame content in general, I really like the addition of solo versions of all of them. For one thing it means a new wave of first clear bonuses, but it also means that you can pretty much entirely avoid co-op if you want to. The solo fights seem to give less rewards, but hopefully still enough that you can just stick to doing them exclusively if you want to. I haven’t tried any of it out, but it sounds like they’re all balanced around solo play, which should make it way more easier to do them than it was to try and solo fights that were designed for co-op.

It’s also kinda funny to me that even though they said we’re getting another tier of difficulty for the Agito fights, the only thing we know that we’re getting from it is fancier skins for the Agito weapons. They’ll probably still get stat boosts, but I could see them pretty much just being cosmetic upgrades.

They also upgraded the amount of weekly chests for HDTs and Agitos to five, and it sounds like we’re gonna start getting double drop events for them soon, so that’s great. In general I think this whole update will make it way easier to actually do endgame grinding, especially with the solo fights.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, which is the new battle royale mode. I haven’t tried it yet, but honestly I actually like the sound of it, lol. I absolutely never expected that they’d add something like this, especially since it’s effectively PVP, but it actually sounds perfectly fine. It’ll probably get tweaked as time goes on, but it sounds like you barely even get any extra rewards from it by winning compared to just dying immediately, and the whole mode is designed to have you start from a blank slate where you and everyone else are at the same playing field, so it’s basically entirely skill-based, and you don’t even need to be good at it to get rewards.

I wasn’t even sure how they’d handle PVP in an action RPG like this, but I think this is a good way to go about it.

We’re also getting a return of the time attack mode, which is . . . worrying, but hopefully now that people are much more familiar with both HDTs and Agitos, it’ll go by a lot more smoothly.  I’m surprised they’re even touching this concept again after how badly it was received the first time, but I’m curious to see how it goes. I know a lot of people really liked it, so hopefully it’s balanced so that you can ignore it if you want to, without feeling like you’re missing out on too much.

They also finally got around to adding sparking, which is great. I honestly wasn’t really expecting it at this point, but after the patch notes got revealed yesterday I figured this was probably gonna happen. I know some people would wish it had been introduced earlier, but I’m glad it’s finally a thing. I still don’t think it’s as much of a make or break issue for me as it is for others, but it’s still pretty much an objective bonus over the old/current system. My main concern with sparking, though, has always been that it might lead them to notably tanking the amount of summons we can do each month as F2P players, which would cancel out the good parts of sparking, but I doubt they’d do that.

Either way, it seems to work in exactly the same way as GBF, in that each summon gets you a unique bit of currency, and when you get 300 of it, you can trade it for a featured unit of your choice. But also like with GBF, your sparks reset after each banner and turn into different items that you can exchange at a store for regular in-game items, so your 300 summons all have to be on the same banner, and you can’t just accumulate a spark by summoning across several banners. Though one thing that seems to be different to GBF is that summons done with diamantum give you twice the amount of sparks, which is really interesting, since it really cuts down on the amount of money you’d need to spend to get a spark that way. It’d still be super expensive to do an entire spark just through diamantum, but 150 summons with diamantum is still way cheaper than 300, lol.

If they keep our monthly summon income about the same as it’s been thus far even after they add sparking, I think that we’d be able to do a spark every 6-8 weeks just from event and log-in bonus rewards. At the moment we get around 150-200 summons per month just from all that, so it seems like it’ll be WAY faster to save for a spark than it is in GBF [where outside of specific holiday periods that have free summon events you’re probably looking at 4+ months of saving to be able to spark].

This at least means it’ll be way easier to plan out my hoarding, since I know that as long as I have 300+ summons saved, I can at least spark a new unit I want. And there’s always the possibility of just getting them early and being able to quit while I’m ahead.

And on the note of summons, we’re also getting 330 free summons total between the anniversary and the end of October, which is absolutely insane. Sadly you can’t save up sparks across banners, so you won’t be able to do a spark JUST from that, but it’d go a long way to helping supplement a spark on a specific banner.

It looks like we’re gonna get a short pre-gala of sorts soon that’ll contain all the previous gala units, but I’m probably gonna skip that, outside of the free pulls. The only one I don’t have from that set is Gala Alex, and at this point I’d rather just chase her when she’s in a future gala remix. If it’s anything like the same type of bonus gala we got for the first anniversary, all the featured units on this banner will probably have lower than normal rates to make up for how many of them will be on the banner, so it’d just be a really low-value banner for someone like me who already has all but one of them. I’m also not even sure if I’d be able to get all the way to 300 summons that quickly.

Either way I’m more interested in saving for stuff like Halloween, Christmas, new gala dragons, and New Years.

We’re also getting Gala Zena on the anniversary itself, and I think everyone saw her coming, lol. She’s not a gun unit, though, which is actually a bit lame, even though I figured it wouldn’t happen. Her being an attack-type light staff unit is really interesting, at least if she ends up working like Heinwald, but I’m still not sure if I’d be interested in actually spending resources to try and get her.

The gala banner is also going to have the new girl from the anniversary event, and a Midgardsormr alt. Though it sounds like he’s going to be non-limited, so he’s not our wind gala dragon.

The anniversary event also sounds extremely interesting. It sounds like we’re time-traveling back 1000 years to when Ilia created her religion, and she seems to basically be a punk biker girl, which is extremely cool on so many levels. It also kinda looks like Zethia is going to be the MC of this event, and it might not even feature Euden and co, which would be a nice change of pace.

I thought Ilia might be our new welfare unit, but going by the preview image for the event it looks like it’ll be Mordecai, who looks like he’s gonna end up possessed by Morsayati or something, since he looks a lot like Morsayati’s human form we’ve seen a few times. I hope he’s a gun unit, just so we can get more of them, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m guessing that Ilia will eventually be playable, but maybe just for the 3rd anniversary event or something.

We also got a tease at the next three main story chapters, which all look really interesting. It seems like the Archangels event is going to pretty immediately become important to the story, and now we’re heading off to North Grastaea. We’re also going to be going to the fairy kingdom eventually, which is cool, especially since the teaser for it heavily implied that Notte will become a playable character then.

Which also reminds me that we’re probably eventually going to get a gun unit from the main story, since we have all the other weapon types already, but I doubt Notte will be a gun unit, lol.

Going by the teasers, I also get the feeling that Leonidas and Chelle will be our next two gala adventurers, and at least one of them, if not both, will probably be a gun unit. I think one of the shots of Leonidas had a gun visible in it, but Chelle’s also apparently the one who introduced guns to the world, so who knows how that’ll turn out. At the very least they did say that we’re gonna start getting new gun units soon, and we might get a lot of them really quickly to help fill out the pool. Which also means that some of the new holiday units might end up using guns, so that’s also worth saving for.

I also get the feeling that we might take a break from gala dragons for a while, since we’ve basically run out of good options for them. But who knows. We still need ones for water and wind.

Hopefully with the spark system in place I’ll be able to spark on at least the Halloween and New Years banners, since those are my top two priorities, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s always scary to enter limited holiday banner hell season, but at least they introduced sparking right before it all starts. At the moment I think I’ve got like 150 summons saved up, but I’ve still got most of my reset co-op rewards to go through, and I haven’t touched the Halloween event they added to the compendium, so that’ll add a lot. I think the anniversary log-in bonus will also give us like 2k wyrmite, and if the retweet event succeeds we’ll get an extra 1.2k wyrmite. So as long as they don’t tank our monthly summon currency, I should be able to spark on Halloween if I can commit to saving for it. Which is much easier said than done, lol.

All in all I think I really love this update, but it REALLY changes the entire game, so it’s gonna take a long time to get used to. And thankfully even with the introduction of stuff like sort-of-PVP, it doesn’t look like they’re going in any sort of P2W direction with the game.

Also, there’s still the 45-minute Game Live presentation set to come later tonight, but I’m not expecting that to tell us much, since it’ll probably be targeted at new players. I’m still holding out hope for a Switch port announcement, though.

[fgodestinyawakenings]

Yuga Kshetra Lostbelt: Verse 18~END

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand FUCKING DONE!! One Command Seal gone with luck trying not to shit on me at the final battle.... Thankfully plot wise has made this Lostbelt easier than the rest. Though unfortunately, next one will spiked up the difficulty again because of plot wise... 

I’ll head back to Agartha now that JP’s side is settled for event requirement. And part of me doesn’t want to.... *sighs* We’ll see... But first, time to end the cycle of Yuga!

Verse 18

First arrow, first wave giving you 9 Berserker Kali and its Boss in the second wave. For this fight’s gimmick, Pepe debuff 1 random enemy with Buster Resistance Down for 3 turns, and 1 of your Servants gets Buster Performance Up for 3 turns. Vitch’s occasional buff returns with a random chance at the start of the battle, she’ll deal 30k damage to all enemies.

However, you’ll received a debuff where one of your Servant receive 3037 damage at the end of each turn. The enemy will also receive the same debuff of this too.

Second arrow gives you break before the third arrow... You can say it’s the easiest fight through this whole Lostbelt. Plot reason, NPC Ashwatthama is your only Servant you can bring with no use of command seals or mystic code

Against Shadow Karna, his NP is his Extra Attack. Ashwatthama’s gimmick of this fight is Permanent, Unremovable AND Unlimited Guts that revives his HP to the Max. And also, he also gains Attack Damage buff up at the end of every turn

Karna has two HP break gimmick:

1st break: Buff with Permanent Attack Damage Up

2nd Break: Buff with Attack Damage Up & Seal Ashwatthama's NP for 1 turn.

Also rest assured, despite Karna’s final gimmick of depleting Ashwatthama’s HP 0 when you completely defeated him, you’ve won the fight 

Verse 19

1st arrow 1st wave... Your boss fight against Limbo aka Ashiya Douman in his true class: Alter Ego. His only gimmick is immediately draining your whole party front-line’s NP to 0 at the start of the fight

If you managed to have a friend support of Kama-Mara, do bring her with you for this fight as her third skill welcomes a lot against him. 

At the start of battle too, Pepe will inflict Buster Resistance Down Debuff for 3 turns towards Limbo. Then, buffs 1 front-line Servant with Buster Performance Up for 3 turns

2nd wave, your first round fight against Arjuna Alter. Immediately upon entering 2nd wave, Arjuna Alter already has his NP bar full. Make sure you have an AOE Defense NP/Skill ready against it

Arjuna Alter’s gimmick has 3 permanent buff of Damage Resistance towards all types of attacks, Debuff Immunity and Attack Damage UP.

Arrow 4, your final battle against Arjuna Alter with NPC Super Karna. You’re NPC-locked heavily by the story plot between these two. For Arjuna Alter, he still has the same buff of Defense buff towards all types of attacks, debuff immunity & Attack Damage Up

For NPC Karna on choosing him, he gets permanent buff of Damage Up, 2K HP recovery at end of every turn & 1-time Guts reviving him at 7,467 HP

Gimmicks for this fight against Arjuna Alter:

1st HP break: Arjuna Alter buffs himself with Attack Damage Up & Critical Rate Up for 5 turns 

2nd HP Break: Arjuna Alter buffs with NP Damage Up & Pierce Invincibility for 2 turns, and charge his NP gauge to max.

When Arjuna Alter’s HP reaches 60k or below, he will immediately buff himself with 1-time Guts for 3 turns reviving him at 2K HP and 2k HP recovery for 3 turns

5th and the final fight of this whole Lostbelt, you’re fighting against the Phanstmal Tree and Ashwatthama with his Master Pepe

Gimmicks:

Ashwatthama:

At the start of the fight, Pepe used his first command Seal to buff Ashwatthama with permanent Attack Damage Up and Buster Up

1st HP break: Pepe buffs him Taunt for 5 turns and additional permanent Attack Damage Up. Ashwatthama will receive another permanent buff 3-hit Damage Cut for 3 turns

2nd HP Break: Pepe buffs him with one more permanent Attack Damage Up

Phantasmal Tree:

Permanent buff of damage Resistance against Noble Phantasm & Defense Up

1st HP Break: Buff with permanent 1 additional tick of NP Charge per turn

2nd HP Break: Removes both defense buff to replace with another permanent 1 additional tick of NP Charge per turn

Last screenshot is to say... HERC-CHAN MY BABY ALLOWS ME TO WIN ONE TREE FIGHT FOR ONCE TT ^ TT)/

Verse 20

The final verse is two arrows of story mode... Which you have now completed Yuga Khestra Lostbelt

Observation & Thoughts:

Despite the strong debuff in the front few chapters.... This lostbelt is considered easier with Pepe and Vitch helping you through this

Which that said, if this is easy, Atlantis Lostbelt onwards is where difficulty spikes up again because plot really begs for it

Fondant au Chocolat is the most recommended CE along with Servant that dealts strong damage against Divine-trait Servants. Majority of the boss fights here contains Divine-trait

Ganesha aka Jinako:

There’s a reason why DW brings in Welfare Quetz-chan... Because you either need her or Ruler Martha for DPS against Jinako

Her fight can be easy if you do watch out for her unexpected NP charge from her skil and NP

Pierce invincibility may or not need often thanks to her NP effect that gives her defense for one turn

While Martha, Quetz and Astraea are viable to bring.... Other rulers are fine too whether you have your own or borrowed as support

ST NP berserker is an alternative with taunters and support to keep them alive

Pierce Invincibility CE and Fondant au Chocolat to deal more damage against her

Berserker Nezha:

The first crit fest Berserker you encounter before Arjuna Alter...

Against her, play safe with bringing Merlin, Jeanne or anyone with AOE invincibility to survive her NP and buff of ignore evasion

2nd round has issue which hopefully solve... Letting her use her NP quickly will bring an end before the final fight

Final round even with Attack down debuff on your team, you still can’t let your guard down with her own debuff of Defense down from both HP break and losing HP every turn

Or you could wait for her particular skill that demerit her HP to 1 to kill her on her last HP bar

Fondant au Chocolat equipped on female-trait damage Servants like Jack and Carmilla will be serve as strong DPS if you have either

Archer Gil to bring with his Enuma Elish against her...

Though taunter should definitely be brought against her buffs of crit fest on your team

Lakshmibai:

.... Yeah, her fight is the easiest thanks to having no NP in the first round and Pepe supporting your team too. 

But her defense up buff for 5 turns can be a pain in the ass

ST NP Archer are more than enough to suffice her mini boss fight

Asclepius:

An Alter ego or Berserker is ideal against him as his fights are always a mixed class

AOE NPs are preferred thanks to him often summoning Berserker mobs if there’s only 1 or 0 left on the field

But beware of his berserker mob that may kill your support or DPS

As usual, Fondant au Chocolat or Kiyohime CE is best to equip on your DPS against him such as Male-trait, Divine-trait or Enuma Elish damage dealing Servants

William Tell:

Definitely bring support with AOE Invincibility thanks to his ignore evasion NP + dealing damage further for those who activated it

But his 2nd round fight in Verse 13 Arrow 4, bring or have your Lancer/Berserker DPS equipped with ignore evasion CE. His 30 hit evasion is completely randomized, which you wouldn’t know when it’ll hit him

His final round, do be careful for his HP break, he’ll then be able to use his NP against you

Brynhildr will be the best choice if you have or borrowed her thanks to his brynhildr’s trait and equip with Fondant au Chocolat... Which again if you have either

Other Lancer are still the best option to deal against William Tell

Taunters will definitely be required thanks to his ST NP

Caster Limbo aka Alterego Ashiya Douman

Unlike Shimosa, you’re now facing against him in his true class. But for now, his true name remains unrevealed and you’re still fighting against him in his ghost form

If you have your NP starting CE equipped... It’ll be uneffective since Douman will drain your front-line party’s NP to 0

If possible, do try to charge NP here before your second wave fight against Arjuna Alter

Kama-Mara is definitely most recommended against him thanks to her third skill

Or otherwise, ST NP berserker or so should one-shot him if needed before going to the 2nd wave

Arjuna Alter:

........... Good god, I wish his last fight isn’t NPC-locked, because I hate those fight the most

First round, wait till Arjuna Alter to release his NP to release his fight. You aren’t able to deal a single dent onto him

2nd round fight... Have Merlin or Jeanne or any support to cast AOE invincibility/evasion at the start of your turn. Arjuna Alter will immediately have NP bar fully charged and unleashed on his turn

His fight is basically crit fest... Taunters are compulsory to keep your DPS and Support alive against him

Servants like Herc and Nero with strong Guts effect are definitely need to bring against him as last standing DPS

Third round... Karna is your main DPS, which is particularly important to keep him alive. His guts buff is extremely needed to be timed with Arjuna Alter on his 2nd HP break where he charges his NP max and buff with 2 turn Pierce Invincibility

Otherwise... This is still a fight I hate the most among the fights in this lostbelt... WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT IT’S OKAY FOR A CRITFEST BERSERKER HERE?!

Aśvatthāman & Quixotic Tree Spiral:

Front few fight isn’t a problem... His first round especially doesn’t have any buff to make it difficult

2nd, 3rd and 4th round becomes more easier thanks to Pepe helping you buffing your team and debuffing him.

But on your final fight... He can be the worst enemy along with the Phanstamsal tree.

You’re forced to focus on Ashwatthama first before dealing against the tree. Pepe’s taunt on his first HP break amplifies further on this

ST NP Lancer is more recommended than AOE on this fight, but do be careful the tree will still do AOE normal attack damage on your team

Ashwatthama’s NP effect... While taunter is needed, to make sure your taunter has their taunt skill maxed out for short cooldown time. His NP or so somehow still removes that taunt buff

Stun, Charm and skill seal are completely useless as he’s immune to them

Foreigners ST NP Servants can be brought along if you want once Ashwatthama is defeated to deal against the tree

Infant of Atlas CE is recommended to equip on your DPS on going up against the Berserker Tree

Wow... I’m finally done with this.... OTL I’m sorry it took so long, I’ve already completed LB4 long time ago. And so much things happened in real life so OTL I’ll jump back to the summer event and now trying to finish Agartha for SQs!