This Is part 3 of a 3 part journal, click [here] for the first article
For those who don’t want to go back and read how this all started, Prisma Illya is my favorite Fate work. I own the first season on DVD and have two Blu-Ray copies of Oath Under Snow. Miyu is my favorite character in the Fate franchise and I am determined to get her in Fate GO. I started the game in January 2020 in order to prepare for a full year for her banner.
Well, here we are; the end of the year-long wait for Miyu. It feels like forever ago that I started this FGO account, waiting for the Prisma Rerun, expanding my servant roster, and gaining new favorite characters. When Miyu was close to approaching, the fear I wouldn’t get her was at an all time high, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s first go over the last few months before Miyu came.
First up is Summer 3! I did not enjoy Summer 3, I’m one of those rare people who is really not a fan of Jeanne Alter and her tsundere-ness in addition to one of the most grind-heavy events I’ve had to go through so far. Having three whole points towers to grind to 1 million each with different nodes being optimal for each, it all just made for an overall unpleasant time and made me long for Summer 5 in JP. I didn’t have it in me to even finish the event. Making her the first welfare I have intentionally missed, but I’ll be sure to try and get her on rerun this summer.
As for rolling this banner I threw in a roll for summer Ibaraki. Not only did Ibaraki come, but so did the long-sought-after Summer Jeanne, who is a great Arts Looper at this stage of the game.
Next was a great event: the Fate/Accel Zero event. Not much to really say when it comes to rolling as I didn’t throw any quartz at it, but the event itself was a nice time as it was a simple mission-based event that had a great story. It was nice to see the cast of Fate/Zero again and having the mature Lord El-Melloi meet his younger self was a blessing.
The welfare for the event was Irisveil, most people couldn’t care less for using her but I put materials into her skills anyway just in case. That “just in case” eventually bore fruit, but we’ll get there later.
Next was the ever-so-famous Gilfest. Gilfest is grinding pain, but the good kind. Unlike an event like Summer 3 where the endless grind is for barely any reward, Gilfest can give a near-infinite amount of QP, Mana Prisms, and skill gems, as well as some other sought-after materials. These rewards are given out in “boxes”, which you can open via tickets you get from grinding the event.
I didn’t grind Gilfest as much as I would have liked; I was a bit screwed over by not having Summer Jeanne’s skills leveled sufficiently in time. I was able to clear 44 boxes and get a good number of my neglected 1-3 star characters leveled. Remember this, it will be important later.
I didn’t roll Gilfest at all, getting Archer Gil wasn’t high enough on my priority list to spend any quartz. Miyu was only a quarter of a year away at this point after all.
Next up was the rerun of Halloween 2. I make it no secret that I really do not like Elizabeth Bathory so combining an Elizabeth event with references to Mazinger Z, one of my favorite mecha anime, was cruel and unusua. So many conflicting emotions went through my mind during the event, all accumulating with “I hope I get Cleopatra from the GSSR”.
Oh, and the mecha-Eli chan I chose was the pink and black one, because once again, I am a big Mazinger Z fan.
After Halloween 2 was Halloween 3: the Mysterious Country of Oni-land! Even though Miyu was so close, I really wanted Sitonai or Chiyome. Sitonai because she was an Illya adjacent character and Chiyome because she was drawn by Hiroshi Hiroyama, the artist behind Prisma Illya.
I threw 30 quartz at the banner, nothing but 3 stars and CEs. When I get nothing I usually throw more quartz at a banner, it’s a bad habit of mine. So I threw 30 more and got Chiyome, I was satisfied.
The event was very fun for me, as you may have noticed by now I have gathered quite a few child servants, while the Oniland event gives all of them a damage boost. So for the whole event I was hitting big numbers during my point grinds. Soon enough I got the summon tickets from the event and since I have 0 will against spending them as soon as I get them I threw them at the banner.
Yup, this event was nothing but good to me. Immediately after the event was the free SR ticket, just like when I started the game and got Medusa Lily from the SR ticket. This time I chose to get Nursery Rhyme, because by this point I may as well get every child servant in the game.
Speaking of child servants, the downloads campaign that brought Nursery Rhyme also brought a rate up for limited foreigner servant Abigail Williams. I got her via the 3 of the 10 summoning tickets from the downloads campaign and in a miraculous display of will for myself didn’t spend the others.
With Nursery Rhyme acquired I had enough gold star Casters to justify doing the Salem story chapter, as Casters have a bond bonus there. Coincidentally Salem also involved Abigail who I had also just pulled. I swear I didn’t plan for things to work out so well.
Salem was interesting as I didn’t want to use anything but Casters, however the Casters I had were either defense or support-focused or low level. So for every single boss encounter of the chapter I did what is probably a stupid move in hindsight; I tried to make an amateur stall team with the Casters I had. Irisviel, Skadi, and a support Zhuge Liang were the stars of the team. Irisviel was on healing duty and guts duty while Skadi and Zhuge Liang were responsible for damage cuts, evades, and NP charges. With the constant Arts chains and between two and three Noble Phantasms going off every turn, it surprisingly worked well; would have probably worked even better if it weren’t for Salem cutting your servants levels in half.
Don’t be me, kids
With Salem done it was time for the rerun Christmas 2, with welfare servant Altera the San(ta). I have very little to say about the event itself. However, the banner was simultaneously amazing and awful for me. See, I wanted 2 more copies of Medusa Lily and she has a rate up here with the other Babylonia servants, most notably the limited 5 Star Lancer Ereshkigal.
I used the 7 tickets remaining from Abigail’s banner to attempt to get another copy of Medusa Lily. With those tickets I got not one, not two, but THREE copies of Ereshkigal. There are people who would kill for that luck and I didn’t want it. I had no intention of using Ereshkigal and I still haven’t leveled her, however with her being NP3 I really need to do that sometime, that luck won’t go to waste
Once Altera Santa’s rerun passed it was time for the story chapter I was most excited for: the China Lostbelt: S.I.N. This story chapter brought several characters I was looking forward to into the game, the ones I was most excited for being Yu Meirin and the Prince of Lan Ling.
The first of the two S.I.N. Lostbelt banners had the Prince of Lan Ling, Qin Liangyu, and Xiang Yu on rate up and I really wanted the Prince. I don’t have an in depth reason other than he is really pretty and I like him. My monstrous luck struck again as I pulled the Prince and Xiang Yu in 90 quartz.
Once I had them pulled it was time to play the story chapter. This was definitely my favorite story chapter so far, surpassing Lostbelt 1 for me. So many memorable dramatic moments from Spartacus’ jump to Jing Ke’s attempted assassination of the emperor with a cell phone alongside some pretty funny moments like Da Vinci’s cuteness being used to win over the villagers to the villains making bad chinese knock offs of the gang’s interdimensional van.
Speaking of the aforementioned emperor, Qin Shi Huang, he was on rate up on the story chapter’s second banner. That banner also included Yu Meirin and Red Hare, all of them limited. I wanted at least one of them and with my insane luck throughout this year getting one of them must have been inevitable.
So I spent some quartz, and then I spent a few more, and then some more, and more. I didn’t get any of them, no gold servants came at all. I used every quartz I had out of frustration. I felt awful for letting this frustration get the better of me, and to make things worse Miyu was now only two months away.
With only two months left until Miyu and me having a grand total of zero quartz, it was time for me to go into grinding overdrive. Remember those 1, 2, and 3 star servants I leveled at Gil Fest? It was time to do their rank up quest, doing those would not only reward me with 2 quartz each but for every 10 I did I would also get an extra 10 quartz. I also had every free quest from London to Lostbelt 3 to do, as well as several interludes and extra quartz from increasing servants bond levels.
Any time I wasn’t doing an event from now on I was either doing rank up quests or free quests, so keep that in mind as we continue .
The next event after Lostbelt 3 was the infamous Christmas 4, this event is infamous for only happening 1 time in the JP servers, with no sign of it being rerun any time in the future. I planned to grind this event as much as possible! It was another lottery event like Gilfest so I planned to open as many boxes as I could to get my 4 and 5 stars fully leveled!
Then tragedy struck. A few days into the event, when I had about 20 boxes opened I got sick. It wasn’t a normal cold either: I was sick with COVID. For nearly two weeks, I felt like hell and didn’t have the energy to stay awake most of the time, nearly that entire two weeks was spent asleep. I managed to get Santa Quetzcoatal to NP 5 before I got sick, but hardly any boxes were opened by me. It was one disaster after another.
Next was something more hopeful: the New Years GSSR! Just like the anniversary, this banner cost 15 dollars for a guaranteed 5-star servant. I paid and rolled the die. The 5-star I got wasn’t particularly noteworthy to me, Summer Artoria Alter. While she was nice to have the real prize of this roll for me was my very first Kaleidoscope: this Craft Essence allows a servant to start a battle with their NP charge already a 80%, an invaluable resource for grinding
Alongside the New Years GSSR was a banner for the New Years event, which brought a new child servant: Beni-Enma. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t spend a single quartz on Beni’s banner and I didn’t….because I got her from the New Year’s campaign tickets! My luck was getting better!
The New Year’s event was fun and let me get a few more bond levels with some lesser used servants of mine, but fear and stress were lingering in me the entire time. Would I be able to pull Miyu with the quartz I had? Would my luck vanish? Would this year have been a waste because of my lack of self restraint? These thoughts appeared in my mind almost daily and I had nightmares of using all my quartz again a second time
Then the time had come: on January 20th Miyu’s banner had arrived. I set an alarm to wake up at 3 AM to make my gacha pulls. Through my last minute grinds, I was able to come up with 330 quartz, 110 pulls worth. The time of reckoning hath come
First 10 pulls, nothing. Just Craft Essences. Disheartening to say the least, but that left me with 100 more pulls. I couldn’t lose faith yet.
It was now time for the second 10 pull, I rolled.
Miyu arrived on the second pull! I was ecstatic, literally yelling with joy! But before I could even process what was going on, I saw rainbow sparks
Miyu and Illya back to back in the same pull! I couldn’t believe this, however I wasn’t done yet. I was going to use all of these quartz to get as many Miyus as I possibly could.
With the remaining 270 quartz I was able to get Miyu to NP3, Illya to NP2, and was spooked with getting Kiritsugu to NP2, Atalante Alter, Nezha, and Chiron. This banner was nothing but nice to me.
I played through the event to get the free NP5 Chloe, allowing me to have a trinity of magical girls to use. After a year of effort this felt great. It still doesn’t feel real; I feel like I’ll wake up any moment and not have Miyu.
As for using Miyu, she’s pretty useless according to most people. Her support NP hurts her and her skills only benefit her, making her not very viable as a support or an attack unit. However, I still plan to use her as a mini-Merlin any chance I get and want to double Miyu as a strategy against bosses. However the issue with double Miyu’s viability comes from her lack of defensive capabilities. Optimally you’re recovering 30-50% NP every turn for the whole party, but that doesn’t mean much if the opponent launches their Noble Phantasm against you.
The only double-Miyu strategy I have really come up with so far is pairing them with Ryoma Sakamoto. Ryoma’s NP decreases charge so that keeps the party safe, he’ll constantly be using it thanks to the Miyus and his own 10% charge is a good safety net, his party wide Arts buff can also help Miyu recover her own NP. It’s my only strategy so far but it’s a good start. If you have any other strategies for making this unloved character viable, comment below. Let’s show Miyu some love!
So what’s my future look like for Fate/Grand Order? I plan to continue playing of course, but who do I want to roll for in the future? Well I may as well get a full sweep of child servants. Da Vinci Lily comes later this year and getting her from the anniversary quartz shouldn’t be hard, after that I’ll have around a year until Summer Illya, Summer Abby, and Van Gogh. I’ll save for them when 2022 comes around. Aside from child servants I would really like Moriarty and Arjuna-Alter, so we’ll see how that goes. For now though, nothing can kill my mood.
Wait, the Prillya event had 6 tickets. I better use them. Can we get Miyu to NP4? Gold rings! Could it be?
Ah well, I can deal with this. To close off this article let’s go over the gold servants I have gotten this year:
5 Star – Beni-Enma, Saber Shiki, Summer Jeanne, Ereshkigal, Summer Artoria Alter, Ozymandius, Skadi, Anastasia, Illya, Jack the Ripper, Xiang Yu, Hijikata Toshizou, Sherlock Holmes, Sitonai, Abigail Williams
4 Star – Prince of Lan Ling, Yagyu Munenori, Suzuka Gozen, Siegfried, Saber Lily, Chiron, Tomoe Gozen, Chloe, Summer Ibaraki, Nezha, Medusa Lily, Sakamoto Ryoma, Summer Ishtar, Mochizuki Chiyome, Kiritsugu Emiya, Shiki Ryogi, Stheno, Atalante Alter, Chacha, Ibaraki Douji, Tamamo Cat, Hercules, Santa Quetzcoatal, Hessian Lobo, Mecha Eli-Chan
Thank you for reading! If you would like to read another Fate related article by me, click here
If you would like to read an article by the person who helped me with this as well as got me into FGO, check out Burner’s Hololive article
